THE LIBRARIES
William Plumer Jacobs
'^9-U/X^
The Life of
William Plumer Jacobs
By
THORNWELL JACOBS, A. M., LL.D.,
President of Oglethorpe University,
Author of" The Law of the White Circle,'' "Sinful Sadday,'
"The Midnight Mummer," "The Oglethorpe
Story," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
New York Chicago
Fleming' H^ RfeveH' Company
London, , , , and -, . ^,Dii^.BiJROH
Copyright, 191 8, by
THORNWELL JACOBS
/J.^
o^»? 73y^-
Printed in the United States cf America
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Ghicagx>> ;i7.Nortb Wabash, Ave.
l.(!indor^:; ii; ^aiernesjer'; 'Square
EdJn'bui'gh: * 7$' ' Prince^ ' Street
Preface
THE value of a human life to his fellows and,
therefore, of any biography to a library con-
sists not in the name of the subject, nor in
that of the town in which he lived. Neither do the
names of his loved ones nor their number avail, nor his
length of years with their praises and honours, to make
the record of his days valuable. But if to these things
which he holds in common Avith other men be added
some new quality of struggle, some new fineness of
sentiment, some new cleverness of thought ; or if per-
chance there was discovered in his career an old truth,
and one almost forgotten, to be set aglow with a mar-
vellous light, then, ere he has walked to the end of his
lonely path— for it is always lonely— men are following
in the glow of his torch and when his career is done
the very glory of God is seen to illumine his footway.
That is why the details of a man's life are usually
uninteresting and the one thing he thought or felt or
did fascinates. The details of Eobert Fulton's days
or the grandparents of Abraham Lincoln are only so
much chaff swept aside by the wind of human thought
seeking the kernel of their life-discoveries. So it is
ever.
A man must be just like his fellows to be of any
value to them.
5
6 PREFACE
A man must be entirely unlike his fellows to be of
any value to them.
Like in dream and struggle and hope ; unlike in
that one difference the possession of which so dif-
ferentiates him from others as to win from them the
term " Great."
As if once to each generation, that none may be
without witness, such men come, learn and teach their
lesson, and go. The world, their friends and relatives
later — for they usually learn it last — note that some-
thing unusual is happening, and after the inevitable
period of ridicule and mockery and opposition, with
their weapons of misrepresentation and evil speaking
and jealousy, they render their words of generous
praise.
It was so with this man as with all the other Great.
'Now that it is all over, the secret of his life stands
revealed. It is an old secret and very wonderful.
From the beginning of time that which felt its power
has glowed with a brightness so strangely beautiful
that even a Moses must turn aside to see. For the life
of this man can be summed up, with all the Apostles
among the Dead, in the single word— God. With it
was coupled unselfishness, and dreams, and common
sense. When he was gone it was seen that a romantic
halo had gathered about Riverside and the Enoree
and the Orphanage and over the whole little town of
Clinton as if the pillars of fire and cloud that had led
him so long would remain yet a little while over the
spot he loved so well.
But, after all, these — his orphans and college and
village and river, his honours and his family— all these
were but incidental to the great purpose of his life
PREFACE 7
which was to show that the Power is conscious of us
and that we may be conscious of Him.
This is the Great Discovery — it is the biggest fact in
our Universe.
It is worth writing a book to illustrate it again.
T. J.
Oglethorpe University^
Atlanttty Georgia.
Contents
I.
At Sixteen
. 13
IL
Choosing the Goal
20
III.
Voices from the Deep .
. 30
IV.
Homeward from Home .
. 40
V.
The Way to Bethany .
. 52
VI.
Putting on the Armour
. 62
VII
In the Upper Room
. 69
VIII.
" My Mary " .
. 76
IX.
The Midnight Watch .
. 82
X.
The Day of Small Things .
. 97
XI.
In My Name . . . •
. 1X2
XII.
The Working Model .
. 126
XIII.
The Rod of Hermes
. 138
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
For that Future .
'« For Thy Sake" .
Noonday . . • •
. 148
. 160
. . 167
XVII.
The Soul of a Soldier
. 178
XVIII.
Building the New Church .
. 195
XIX.
In the Later Years .
. 200
0
XX.
Moving His College
. 2X8
XXI.
Giving Up the Church .
. 225
XXII.
The Battle with Death
. 235
XXIII.
The Soul of a School .
. 253
XXIV.
Life and Leaves .
. 260
XXV.
His Successor
. 270
Illustrations
opposite page
William P. Jacobs
Mary Dillard Jacobs . . . • •
The First Building of the Thornwell Orphanage
" Home " for Thirty-Six Years
Memorial Hall ...••••
William P. Jacobs at Various Ages .
Buildings of the College and Church
The Latest Photograph, Taken in Atlanta at the
Home of His Youngest Son •
Title
80
120
152
170
212
220
250
11
AT SIXTEEN
Ah, Lord, how little do we men, below,
Yet understand from whence Thy footsteps tread !
Of all the millioned words that men have said
What one reveals the whither Thou dost go ?
WE lift the veil of the past and there appears
a little boy in a great city. He is five
feet and three inches in height ; he weighs
ninety-three pounds, and is in the Fresh- Sophomore
year at college. It is his sixteenth birthday and his
brother Eipley has broken his spectacles of which mis-
fortune he says, '' I must have them to-morrow."
He is not a strong lad, complaining often of colds
and sore-throat and of sharp touches of pain in his
lungs ; his breast hurts him so. His eyes also are con-
stantly troubling him and as he peers through the
glasses which he always wears going here and there
about the city his friends liken him to a dreamer—
which he is.
The city in which he lived is one of whose mother-
hood any youth might feel proud. It was of her that
her own famous son Petigru had once said : " In the
circle of vision from St. Michael's there has been as
much high thought spoken, as much heroic action
taken, and as much patient endurance borne as in any
equal area of land on this continent." The oldest
benevolent society in America was hers, St. Andrews.
13
14 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
In her halls the first drama was given in this country.
The first cotton ever shipped from America was from
her port. She claimed to have built the first long rail-
road in the world, and spoke of her library as the third
oldest in America. Her name was Charleston and she
ranked among the important cities of the United
States.
And the boy upon whose soul the Great Sun was
rising loved the city and thought of her as marvellous.
He found in her the things wherein his heart delighted.
There was the college which he was attending with its
library upon whose shelves ten thousand volumes
waited to welcome him. Many were the happy hours
he spent there. A museum was hers also which he
was constantly describing in his diary. It occupied
the whole of the third floor and the collection of birds
was his especial delight. In his Charleston lived
Mr. Woodruff who loved phonography, "that noble
study " which he also loved, and there was the orphan
home of which he took note that provision was made
for a college education for those who were far ad-
vanced and it was located in a building which he
thought of as large and beautiful.
We can understand the temper of this boy of sixteen
the better by noting one or two of those dominant
traits which were to so surely determine his future.
We view his soul in the mirror of his diary. He was
at prayer-meeting and " They prayed for me ! " An-
other night was rainy, preventing his attending his
literary society, but " it was all for the best, for that
night they had some uproarious mirth which would ill
have suited me." Some of the young ladies in his
father's seminary attended a dancing school in th©
AT SIXTEEN
15
city, it being his task to escort them home often. Of
this he writes — " I do most heartily wish that nobody
had ever heard of dancing."
He gets his college report and notes that his average
is eighty-nine, better than last year, and wonders
whether he is still first in his class. Next term he will
do better. Miserly of time he finds out how to save an
hour by studying an hour immediately after breakfast,
thus " saving myself from talking nonsense at college."
He is often afraid for his religious life but promises
%V^ASnw^^1^^^^:lJ^.
His own representation of an ante-bellum Boarding School,
taught by the author of " Young Marooners," which he ad-
tended near Kingston, Georgia, when a boy, before entering
Charleston College. From the first volume of his Diary.
himself to perish only on his knees. He notes that few
in his classes like him because he is punctilious about
studying his father's wishes and the rules of the col-
lege. Of him he says, *'I have a good kind father, I
love my father." One day that father gave him a desk
that formerly belonged to his mother. " While you
were here, Mother," he writes, " I did not love you as I
ought but I love your memory and will ever love it."
He was clean of mind and lip, esteeming profanity to
be deprecated above all things. His pets were the
Chrestomathic Society, the orphan house, the college
16 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
museum and library, a rare coin, the noble science of
phonography and prayer-meeting. If he had possessed
Aladdin's lamp he would have wanted to see Europe,
Asia, Africa and America.
And he wanted everybody to love God.
There was something both strange and great about
the tastes of this youth. He was fond of study, rising
often at five in the morning to save an hour. He read
Todd's Student's Manual, which pleased him well, and
was particularly fond of astronomy. He loved libra-
ries and printing as his fathers before him had done.
" I studied very hard to-day," he writes in his diary,
"and set the title page to ' Notes on the Bible.' " He
liked to wander through the museum and interpret the
stories of the wonders he saw there. He would often
get his lessons early and go in at " Courtenay's " and
"have a conversation with his books," adding in his
journal, " Oh, I do love books ! "
These were some of his tastes but his deepest taste
was for God.
" Oh, let me always remember this night," he wrote
on February 8, 1858. "To-night I applied for ad-
mission to the church and was received as a member.
I applied the 26th of last October but I was received
only as a seeker. Thank God I am enabled to receive
Him to my heart. O that Pressley would find the way
I have ! Father joined just at my age."
All that he ever did thereafter was foreshadowed in
that entry. For his soul had surrendered itself to a
belief that utterly mastered him. "Let infidels say
what they will about the Infinite Jehovah mixing in
the affairs of puny mortals, yet I feel that the Lord of
Hosts has often mingled in my affairs. He has brought
AT SIXTEEN 17
me through many difficulties and dangers safe in body
and mind and has answered many of my prayers."
And to this boy of sixteen it was an inevitable
sequence that his spirit should find no rest save in the
service of the Power. Little by little the idea of the
ministry takes hold upon him. He called it a delight-
Oftiie _ Books.
• 1. History
GdQ«6!9» 6Xodnd« Levtticas, Dambeis, doute
HTODomy^ |<^haa» judges* rath^sajraoal \i
kiQgs ii» c!uron»o{es it- e^ra- oebexaiAli-
2» Poetry*
^ob- psalffls. proverbs* ^ccteiisstes, soIomo&
60Qg, lamootatiotts.
S. PropIieer«
leaiab* jetemiab* esekiet, datiiQf^ bos^a* joo*
amoa- obadiab- jooab, micah- o&bum* bfibbs^
4piI^4^ reveiatlona^
4U€l&urclii History*
llaUb9w« mark, lake- jobiu sot^
A page from his first book " Notes on the
Bible," which he wrote, printed and published
when about sixteen years of age.
ful occupation and longed to breast the waters of its
flood. In February it was a thought, in November it
was a determination.
He seemed himself to know that this year of 1858
was to be a memorable year of his life. In it he heard
the famous Everett in his masterly oration on Washing-
ton and wrote it down as the second great day of the
18 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
year. Shortly afterwards he heard Mr. Thornwell lec-
ture before the Y. M. C. A. and thought himself unfit
to describe his ability. In September, while the yellow
fever was raging in the city, he caught sight of the
Great Comet of Donati, discarding his spectacles for his
father's spy-glass to view it better and noting its im-
mensity with astonishment at the handiwork of his
maker.
But above all other things, it was in this 3^ ear that he
reached out his arms to God.
Not content with surrendering his present, he would
surrender his future. He was ready to go to the utter-
most parts of the earth fulfilling his dream. He would
give both soul and body. " Ordain me," he prayed,
*' to go and preach the holy and eternal gospel to Thy
dying heathen. I am willing. Lord, if Thou art ! "
And so this unusual lad came to the close of his un-
usual year, yearning to taste of the sweet waters of life
and the bitter. We see him a deeply religious youth,
weak in throat and lungs and eyes, fond of libraries, a
lover of books and printing and languages, disliking
noise and dancing schools, preferring to dust his father's
books, constantly calling himself lazy and sinful but
rising at five in the morning to read and pray and
study, lonely among his fellow students, already both-
ered about theology, a lover of Latin and Greek and
German and the " noble science of Phonography,"
fond of stars "and ancient coins, ever meditative over
the brevity of this life and wondering over that which
was to come, critically observant of his personal habits,
and, though conscious of his weakness, unafraid be-
cause of a superb faith in God.
Such was the lad who wrote on the first day of that
AT SIXTEEN 19
eventful year, " A journal is a picture of the mind,"
and on the last — " And now on this the last day of this
year let me pause and cast a scrutinizing glance over
all my past life. Have I lived a Christian year ?
Have I drawn one year nearer to God ? As this year
has come to an end so also will my life finally draw to
a close."
Then he placed the first tiny volume of his diary
carefully away until the coming of that day, writing
on its fly-leaf the unknown name of its author,— Wm.
P. Jacobs.
n
CHOOSING THE GOAL
I love
Birds and stars and trees.
Flowers, books and bees,
Ants and embryology,
Poems, anthropology,
The gold of Hermes' rod,
These : all of whom are God.
THERE has been nothing more astonishing in
all history than the discovery that each of us
was once one cell. Embryologists tell us that
the most powerful microscope and the acutest intellect
are alike unable to distinguish between the first one-
roomed house in which lion or oak or fish or man first
lived. Yet in that original germ, given the proper
environment, lies latent the power, the spirit, the prin-
ciple that will eventually distinguish a leopard from a
lichen. What this marvellous thing is we do not and
probably never shall know, nor may any eye see those
invisible processes which work out their inevitable
destinies. Yet all these wonderful determinations are
there, and to be unfolded need only time and life.
Perhaps this is what he subtly saw who wrote : " The
spirit of a youth who means to be of note, begins
betimes."
And so it happens that, guided by a long series of
inheritances that have concentrated the attainments of
his forefathers within it, the cell begins its high task
of expressing itself. It builds for itself leaves or fins
20
CHOOSING THE GOAL 21
or claws or fingers. As it lives within, so it lives
without. All that is seen is the expression of all that
is unseen.
And, since everj'^thing in this world is like everything
else, we may see herein the story of each human life.
No eye sees, no ear hears, no hand touches that un-
known Within, the strange process of whose laws
works unceasingly to express themselves in word and
deed, in books and buildings, in property and institu-
tions. Men, like germs, look very much alike as they
go about their respective affairs, but when time shall
have been given for their natures to build a body about
them we see that one has become a lion, one a reptile,
one a pig and one a man.
Now as we study the life of Wm. P. Jacobs and see
it taking its own distinctive shape we mark certain
divergencies between this youth and others.
The greatest thing about this boy was that he wanted
to give himself away. He believed a thing that could
only be proven in that way. He believed that if a man
would not seek great things for himself but for God he
could tap the fathomless reservoir of power and with it
build orphanages or colleges or churches or cotton mills
or character ; but of the five only character mattered.
To do this he knew it would be necessary to develop
every trait of greatness and this must be done by meet-
ing all that life held for all in a godlike way. This
would call for tears and disappointment and every
troublous thing that the life of mankind offered. But
it would bring one great compensating joy — he could
burn and hence be a flame that would show how life
could be made beautiful and wonderful with the light
of God.
22 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
And that was what he wanted to be and do more
than anything else in the world, to be a friend of God,
and do the works of God. As soon as he saw it he
went out, sold all that he had and bought it. It
brought a joy beside which the comforts and pleasures
of ordinary life seemed misery.
Thus early his life may be summed up in one sen-
tence. It gave him more pleasure to get a letter from
God than to deposit the check pinned to it.
And when we first begin to read his mind he is
gathering up evidence to prove that God really wrote
the letter.
So in the late days of his sixteenth year he took his
motto and chose his ideal in these memorable words :
" Those words are still sounding in my ears — ' Seekest
thou great things for thyself, seek them not.' It has
always been one of my dreams to be distinguished ; I
have always been seeking great things for myself, to
be honoured, loved and respected of all has been my
greatest ambition, and is it wrong to wish, to strive for
these ? Are these great things ? Will striving for
them be seeking great things for myself ? The answer,
I fear, is ^ Yes ! ' though I would not have it so.
' Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not,'
and the divine command must be obeyed. I will not
seek great things for myself. I will seek them for
God. I will strive to lay all my laurels at Jesus' feet
and say to Him, ' Lord, they are Thine.' I will not be
an indifferent preacher, a medium man. I will strive
and try not to gain great things for myself but to gain
them for God."
It is characteristic of all great souls that with a con-
suming desire they long to drink of the cup whereof
CHOOSING THE GOAL 23
Jesus drank and be baptized with His baptism. In its
increasing frequency, if it can be made to increase, is
to be found the universal solvent of all human prob-
lems. The text of all such lives is that first text which
our boy of sixteen heard once and whose thought he
followed with an utter abandon of servitude — " Seekest
thou great things for thyself ? Seek them not ! "
This is the mantle which he wore, his raiment white
and glistening. Like the ancient mantle of Elijah, it
falls to the ground waiting for some Elisha to reach
for it. And, as then, so now the Great Law holds that
when Jehovah would take His prophet up to heaven
by a whirlwind he is ready to give this richest gift to
any man who wishes it and is able to see its former
wearer when he is taken away. And, as was Elisha,
so are we wise enough to know that this gift is his
spirit which ever remains when the bodies and words
of prophets are gone, visible only to those who have
eyes to see. For the most marvellous as well as the
most important thing about any great life is the spirit
in which its work is done, comprising as it does his
sweetest goal. He may build orphanages or colleges
or churches ; these are but accidents. The man who
sees them does not see the man's work, much less the
man. The spirit of his life, invisible, intangible, inaudi-
ble, determines these forms of its expression. It tells
the quality of his purpose, the depth of his power, the
fineness of his principles. In what spirit did he wel-
come labour ; in what spirit did he take defeat ; in what
spirit did he face the storm ; in what spirit did he en-
dure reverses ; in what spirit did he give ; in what
spirit did he take ; in what spirit did he think of enemy
or friend, of profit or loss ; of comfort or pain ?
24 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
There are but two questions that need be asked to
reveal the character of a man : How did he look on
gold, and how did he look on God ? And those two
are one question.
It is as if a man who had found the way to true hap-
piness walked up and down the highways of life urging
all to come with him. The multitude note the peace of
his brow, the joy of his eyes, the certainty of his step.
They watch the wonders he performs and are astonished
at the greatness of the works that bear witness to the
truth of his message. They themselves would like to
be able to do these great things, wear these beautiful
laurels and bear these high honours, a few would even
be willing to sacrifice their comfort and pleasures for
them but they are equally estopped from following him
who feared the selfishness of the honour and glory
equally with the selfishness of ease and profit. Only
here and there is there a man who can even see the
kingdom of heaven in which he lived or recognize this
altruism and self-denial as the very chariot of Israel
and the horsemen thereof, things desirable in themselves
and means whereby God speaks to man.
It was this life and this path that our boy of sixteen
chose as his. He asked a hard thing.
** Love took up the harp of life and struck on all the
chords with might,
Struck the chord of self which trembling passed in
music out of sight."
So his goal stood revealed for he was plainly drunk
with devotion to God. He would perfect himself in
six languages, English, Latin, Greek, French, German
and the " mellifluous Hebrew," because he might need
CHOOSING THE GOAL 26
/i«wu4^i« dittos.* f^-^j(zU^. 'y;C ^y>*^ ^^~v^ucu^ 'fev-w^ «,««« 9teu:s;v~^
^^^l- <^ ovrfo vx^-, ^^5;j^, ^
^,^1^ ff ^^i:^i^"/''<w,^ ♦n.^>f/r4 fiji^(t>^ oMMU^L
A page from a little book on « The Alphabet " which he wrote
when about seventeen years old.
26 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
them in serving God. He wanted a good library to
serve God. He took exercise that he might keep well
for God. He would try to live by fixed principles, for
a man without them or who did not adhere to them
could not be a credit to his God. He planned to be
good for God. Everything was for God and he wanted
God so !
" I do wish I was a better boy," he exclaimed. " I
wish that God was my God, that Jesus was my Saviour
and that I was His son, that I dwelt in the bosom of
Him whose ' love sticketh closer than a brother.' O
God, be my God ! "
And this beautiful picture of his college life early re-
vealed him standing an astonished gazer on the marvels
of life and Providence. The world was very wonder-
ful. It seemed so wonderful to him to live ! What a
glorious thing it would be if he could become a grad-
uate of Columbia Seminary !
Here is a youth who wanted a shorthand book so
badly in his sixteenth year that in his poverty he could
only exclaun, " I wish I had a dollar," writing : " Last
night was so beautiful a night that even now I seem to
see it as I did when I and Johnny Caldwell were walk-
ing up to the college together. Orion flamed over our
heads in deadly combat with the Bull ; while Sirius
gleamed near us with unwonted luster. Luna, bright
and full as the day when the evening stars sang to-
gether, shone over the eastern horizon driving before
her the double winged Saturn with his seven moons.
Here and there a fleecy cloud floating slowly along re-
sembled a distant milky way, while all around was as
quiet as the day when Adam and Eve, the father and
mother of all living, sat alone in Paradise. O ! it was
CHOOSING THE GOAL 2Y
a lovely sight, a sight worthy of its Creator and to me
only needed the moonlit field and the glassy lake to
hold me in quiet rapture."
He was doing, therefore, an exceedingly dangerous
thing, this admirer of God, for he was ready fatuously
to follow Him. Something was sure to happen when
this boy got out in the world, either a catastrophe or a
glory. He was going to risk his life on so foolish a
thing as faith and so tenuous a path as prayer. Could
it end in anything but disillusionment?
And how seriously he took life, even each minute of
it. He cannot quite consent to his love of chess, the
time consumer. '' O fures," he exclaimed, " latrones, O
tyrannos crudelissimos quorum consilio mihi umquam
periit hora " which illustrates equally his fear of losing
an hour and his love of Latin. Time seemed to him to
go so fast. It would be such a short while before col-
lege days would be over and then life itself was but a
bit longer. Like all great minds he had become bur-
dened by the consciousness of the brevity of life.
Hence his craving for usefulness. He looked forward
with delight to serving others. " I long to preach ! " he
writes. " I love, too, to hear Father's sermons, and 1
only wish that he had a country parsonage and church.
I do hope that if God shall make of me a minister that
He will place me to work in some quiet country place.
Surely then my lines would have fallen to me in pleas-
ant places. I do most ardently desire to become a min-
ister and to labour to do God's service, but O Lord, Thou
know est me that I am the most unworthy of all Thy
servants.'*
He determined, " God willing, the chief end and aim
of my life should be, to be of service and glory to my
28 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Maker, to love Him and do His bidding, to be a man,
free, active, unselfish as a generous youth ; bold, zeal-
ous, honest, unflinching as a man. I will be a servant
and adorer of my Maker ; always relying on Him to
the utmost."
These were the main elements in the spirit of Wm.
F. Jacobs, rising Junior of Charleston College, in the
year 1859.
It had been a year replete with interest and toil.
Since his last birthday he had grown three inches taller
and gained twelve pounds in weight, and felt confident
of his improvement also along other lines. The sum-
mer he had spent on Edisto Island with friends of his
father's so pleasantly that ever afterwards he was to
call it " my beloved Edisto." In November he received
through Mr. Woodruff, his brother in the bonds of
phonography, an offer from Dr. Gibbes of the Caro-
linian of fifty dollars for three weeks' reporting of the
sessions of the Senate in Columbia, which he accepted.
Once there, he visited the theological seminary. He
was glad he went for there he met four students,
" Buist, Banks, Law and George Petrie, whom I have
not seen for four years. Tom (Law) explained every-
thing about the seminary." Later he had a long,
friendly letter from Tom Law. They were to be in
the seminary together and he hopes that they are to be
good friends all through life.
This was the year also of his father's remarriage.
One evening his father called him into his room and
said, '* Willie, how would you like a mother ? " He
was dumfounded. The spirit in which he met her was
characteristic :
" Father arrived in Charleston to-day," he wrote in
CHOOSING THE GOAL 29
his diary, *^ with Mother, and a very nice mother she
is. I am sure I will love her, yes, for I love her now
with all my heart. She looks just like Father's proper
wife. Oh, may she love me as truly as I do now love
her. As soon as she had taken possession of her room,
Father called me in and said, * Willie, is this Mother or
Miss Carrie Lee ? ' What could I answer but ' Mother ' ?
Yes, she shall love me and I her. I have to go to col-
lege to-morrow although I think that I ought not to.
Why ? Because I don't want to. Our lesson too is all
about stars and constellations, when a far brighter star
has just entered my hemisphere and it requires all my
observation."
He loved his father, whose life-story was so like
and yet so unlike his own. He notes that he seemed
to have inherited his father's tastes more than had any
other of the children. " Father has expressed his de-
sire," he adds, " that I shall become his representative.
God grant that I may be a worthy representative and
help me to do my best ! "
Always, God !
And in this year, very early in it, there occurs a sen-
tence written parenthetically in his diary that is full of
beautiful prophecy. " Kemember," he writes, " I am a
lover of children ! "
He loved so many things, this youth of seventeen,
books, singing, sermons, museums, phonography, stars,
travel, chess, father, Bible, life, churches, colleges, God
— and little children.
m
VOICES FEOM THE DEEP
To know my Lord doth love me,
'Tis all my heart would know;
For He is Heaven above me,
And He is Earth below.
THE faces of children are generally associated
with the future but their finest associations
lie with the past.
The stranger who meets your little boy sees nothing
in his face but a fair promise of coming days. It is the
friend who really interprets.
Your friend sees him and says at once, " He is like
his father."
Your wife's friend sees him and exclaims, " How like
he is to his mother ! "
Your father's boyhood companion happens by and
notes the resemblance to his grandfather.
And some day an aged relative comes, one who had
known his great-grandfather, and it seems to him that
the features of the ancient dead have reappeared.
JS'ow the interesting part about these resemblances is
that they are all there !
If we are "a part of all the men whom we have
met," how much more are we a part of all the ancestors
who have begotten us.
So it comes to pass that there are ancient voices cry-
ing to us out of the depths of our souls, and a thing
30
VOICES FROM THE DEEP 31
that a man did three generations ago may rule our
mood of to-morrow.
As the spirit unfolds these sub-spirits appear, these
older memories. They mingle with the environment
of to-day, its admonitions, its teachings, its influences.
They wax or wane in power as the years pass. Eventu-
ally, modified by circumstances, they are more or less
fused into a dominant passion, the fixed ideal of a life,
and are in turn transmitted to generations to come.
Scientists, and all who read their works, recognize the
term "Sport." A sport is a variation in the line of
descent. Like begets unlike by seeming chance. New
and dissimilar characteristics appear. A new combina-
tion of elements has taken place. Hence a Shakespeare.
From the depths of his soul three spirits were con-
stantly calling upon Wm. P. Jacobs to follow them—
the spirits of the Creator, the Preserver and the Saviour.
The last was the first to develop and showed itself in
his desire to be a Christian and a minister. The second
followed quickly, expressing itself in the recording care
of the historian whose diary would gather up each
little daily happening and preserve each passing me-
mento and whose library would be full of well-kept
records and bound volumes of reports. The third was
the last and perhaps the deepest passionate cry. It
bade him create ; at first as an author and later as a
founder of churches, colleges, and orphanages.
One of these voices was well known in his family
history ; the voice of the minister. His father was a
minister and in the line of his paternal ancestry there
had been no man who was not preacher, teacher or
printer back to that dim figure of whom his father had
told him, who left England with the Puritans and be-
32 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
came professor in the University of Leyden, changing
his English James to the Latin Jacobus.
Doubtless also from his father came much of that
f |0 ^IHihriaiL
No. I. JULY, 1859. VolTT
OUR SALUTATORY,
In casting forth a new sheet into the already well-
filled world of periodicals, the Editors have in view the
propagation of Chess, as well as the pleasure and pro/it
of itheir patrons, of whom they solicit, simply, tJie obs^^r-
i^an<^e of the Golden Rule- They would endeavour,
faithfully, to discharge their allotted tasks j and in order
4o do so, satisfactorily, they need, and consequently re-
quest, ori^lnQt contributions to their Editorial di-awers.
The services of Mr. W. P. J , in the lUcrart/y and
of Mr. 0. A. M , in the scientific departmeat have
been engaged; to whom all communications must be ad«
dressed. To all unacquainted with the celebrated gamCt
a series of Chess articles is promised, giving elementary
and advanced instruction, suitable alike to amateur and
beginner, and to all, they would ssiy-^-colcuIate upon
the fjfreat improvement of our page !
First page of Vol, I, No. i, of his first magazine venture.
fine precision and care w4th which he kept preserving
the record. But that voice of the Creator which
kept expressing itself in the cry for authorship, increas-
VOICES FROM THE DEEP 33
ing ever in volume and intensity, the desire to be a
poet, a maker, a doer of the things of which his muse
dreamed, whence, from what depth of His invisible
unknown came that voice ?
And here we must remember a thing that may seem
to be very far away but is really very near. The order
is yearning— prayer— answer. And he who gives one
gives all. '
During the years 1860 and 1861 he was distinctly a
reporter and author. As the former he witnessed the
ill fated Democratic Convention in Charleston in the
spring of 1860 and reported the Legislature in Colum-
bia :and Charleston in the fall of 1860, the Secession
Convention in the last month of the same year and the
first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian
Church in Augusta the following year. As an author
he was the writer of a number of fugitive poems for
the News and Courier and the Field and Fireside, of
more serious articles for the Southern Presbyterian
and the Courier, and of a number of booklets. His
plans for future literary works were nothing short of
astonishinof.
In all this he was ever mindful of two things : the
tick of the clock and the throne of God.
" I am nearly nineteen," he writes. " Ten years will
make it twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine, fifty-nine.
Say I do arrive at fifty-nine, which is far more than I
ever will do. I must die then. Let me work then-
the night is near at hand. Day is added unto day t
year to year ! But death cometh. "
Therein we hear the voice of the JSTovember winds
whom the dead leaves follow one by one. It is Youth
facing Death— astounded.
34 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Then the Ime-bred spirit of the minister answers
from the Innermost and he exclaims, " I love to con-
fide, to trust in God ! I love everything — life seems so
fresh. God grant that my life may be devoted to
Him/'
If we follow the story of his life during these two
years we find them full of interesting happenings
which toss him here and there in the world as if to
teach him of what sort of stuff life is composed.
The opening days of '60 found him busy at his books
working hard in the prospect of soon becoming a
Senior. This was to be a year which he later called
" The bright year of my life." He is living with his
father in Charleston and does not know that their
family life is soon to end. He is even more a devotee
of phonography which has become a support as well as
a delight and is even in correspondence with Benn Pit-
man, who publishes a note from him in his PJiono-
grajphic Magazine. He is trying to learn to sing,
hoping some day to be a " tenor vocalist." He is be-
ginning to write for the papers and planning to spend
his vacation on his " beloved Edisto." He is often
thinking, earnestly thinking of the future and asking
strange questions of his soul.
Then suddenly Fate opens a crack in the door
through which he is to pass.
The Democratic Convention met in Charleston to
nominate a President of the United States. Its failure
to do so unitedly was about to precipitate the War be-
tween the States.
One Monday, realizing that a historic scene was to be
observed in the Convention hall he obtained his ticket
and hurried to the galleries in " time to hear several
VOICES FROM THE DEEP 35
speeches and to see Alabama, South Carolina, Missis-
sippi, Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Georgia withdraw
from the Convention " amid tremendous applause. Of
this scene our prescient young reporter writes :
"In future days I can say how that I pressed in
among others to this Democratic Convention. I saw
the grave and reverend heads of the people, political
Ticket of Admission to the Charleston Convention of 1861.
fathers, in grave convention assembled, to deliberate
on the tottering affairs of the nation. I partook of the
terrible contentions and confusions which universally
prevailed — I saw this great Republic tottering to its
foundation stone." J
This was in April and early May. When July came
we find the ministerial spirit strengthening its voice.
He is planning to go out as a missionary under the
auspices of the Sunday School Union, and strange feel-
ings and fears are in his heart. He doubts his fitness
for the work but will pray for aid and enlightenment.
Perhaps God will help him in time of need.
And thereafter came a wonderful vacation month on
Edisto, saddened only by his knowledge that his father,
having received a call to the Fairvie^^ Church near
36 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Marion, Alabama, and having accepted it, would no
longer be near him to watch over his studies.
" When I return to Charleston," he writes, " I will
have no home. I must board as a stranger in an old
familiar place. How sad ! I will be passing away —
but a little while and I shall know it no more. But
this earth is nothing more than a short abiding place.
We must die to make way for others, but there is room
enough for all in heaven. Father goes to Fairview
to-day. ' Parting, oh, parting, parting is pain.' God
bless thee, my father ! Thou hast always trusted in
Him. He will aid thee now. Thou hast taught me
where to gain consolation. Thou hast always loved
and aided me. Oh ! how can I repay thee for all thy
kindness ? I will not try, I would rather be in thy
debt. Gratitude, oh ! how sweet to be grateful to
thee. God bless thee, my father, God bless thee."
Thereafter events moved rapidly. His kst term at
college begins and this boy, of whom his father once
said that he could not do wrong except by accident,
buckles down to hard work, sa^ang : " What is life
worth but to serve ? "
And then a curious little incident occurs. Dis-
tressed at the necessity of being supported by a father
who has many other responsibilities and limited means,
we find him in prayer for work which he calls help.
" Oh, God, give me something to do ! " he cries.
" Show me where I may find work. Answer me for
Jesus' sake."
And then the days pass. Perhaps he forgot the
prayer of September 29th. He even writes, " All my
brightest anticipations have been dashed. I had ex-
pected to report the present session of the Legislature,
VOICES FROM THE DEEP 37
but I have tried in vain ; and the Synod, but that too
is dashed."
But one morning, November 29th, he was astonished
by hearing his name called and a " Telegraphic Des-
patch " was handed to him. It was from Columbia
and read, " Come up immediately and report for me ! "
We shall remember this happening. It is typical of
them both.
The Legislature, which met in Columbia, soon ad-
journed, on account of a severe smallpox epidemic, to
Charleston, where, on the twentieth of December, it
passed the fateful Ordinance of Secession, our reporter
scattering the printed resolutions upon the eager crowds
outside.
Describing the scene, he says, "The Resolution
read :
" * An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the
State of South Carolina and other states united with
her under the compact entitled " The Constitution of
the United States of America."
" ' We, the people of South Carolina, in Convention
assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby de-
clared and ordained— That the Ordinance adopted by
us in Convention, the 23d day of May, in the year of
our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United
States was ratified and also all Acts or parts of Acts
of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amend-
ments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed
and that the Union now subsisting between South
Carolina and other States under the name of the
" United States of America" is hereby dissolved.'
" At seven minutes after one the vote was taken on
the Ordinance, ' As name by name fell upon tlie ear of
38 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
the silent Assembly, the brief sound was echoed back
without one exception in that whole grave body —
Aye ! ' Scarcely had the President announced the
vote unanimous before the people assembled without
sent up one universal shout of triumph and men and
children ran from street to street heralding the glad
tidings. All the stores were closed, bands of soldiers
were immediately parading and crowds were gathered
everywhere to hear and tell the news. The Mercury
extras were seized with an eagerness unparallelled in
the annals of the Charleston Press. At 6 : 30 the Con-
vention again met and proceeded in a body to the
Secession (Institute) Hall to ratify the Ordinance. At
the foot of the stairs they were joined by the Senate
and House of Representatives and the three bodies took
their seats, from which six months before their repre-
sentatives had seceded. An old gray-headed man was
brought forward to supplicate the throne of grace and
Dr. Bachman poured out his whole soul in it. The
President then read the Ordinance and when he had
finished it, the whole audience rose and gave tremen-
dous applause. One by one the delegates went up and
signed the Ordinance and when the last was added
President Jamison said, ' I do, therefore, declare South
CaroUna to be a separate and independent common-
wealth.' Every man, woman and child leaped up, hats
flew high in air, and cheer after cheer echoed and
reechoed from floor to roof, from side to side, until
exhausted it fell down in one long, loud cadence of re-
joicing. It was the noblest moment of my life. Even
now, while I write, my blood thrills with excitement
at the thought. The same scene was enacted in the
street. General Martin, by the light of a street lamp,
VOICES FROM THE DEEP 39
read the ordinance to the crowd where it was met
with similar enthusiasm. Thus ended the glorious 20th
of December."
With such exciting scenes he closed " The brightest
year of my life," amid uncertainty and doubt and
loneliness and labour, with the vast war cloud blacken-
ing overhead. And he feared as he entered into the
cloud. Had he known how to discern the signs of the
time he would have heard the rumbling of the deep
forces which were moving to change the whole scenery
of the stage and set his life amid the poverty and de-
spair from which its finest message was to come. He
would have seen the messengers of God hurrying hither
and thither sprinkling the ashes of woe everywhere
with that completeness in which was largely to lie the
meaning of his whole career. He would have felt the
whirr of martial wings rushing to ruin the achieve-
ments of the mind and hand of the Old South leaving
a pathway among them open only to him who could
walk by faith.
The dark chapter in his nation's novel was about to
be written and he was to be a letter in it.
A letter raised and illumined in gold.
lY
HOMEWAED FEOM HOME
The waiting soul is sick for work to be ;
The eye looks, languid, at slow-passing days ;
The heart beats wearily each systole,
And frets at opportunity's delayed pace.
Yet fill, O Soul, with hope Thy faithless gloom,
For to Thee, hoping not, Thine hour shall come.
" 1 A URY me on my face," said Diogenes. Being
1"^ asked " Why ? " he replied : ^' Because in a
JL^ little while everything will be turned upside
down ! "
And so it was in 1861.
With the war enthusiasm at fever heat it was but
natural that the Senior class at Charleston College
should present a petition to their faculty setting forth
the impossibility of their doing justice to their work on
account of the intensity of the patriotic fires in their
souls and asking for immediate possession of their diplo-
mas. This they did, every member of their class sign-
ing it.
Scarcely had it been done before the war began, the
fateful adventure of the Star of the West precipitating
it on the ninth of January.
Then followed a rapid breakup of ties and relation-
ships. JSTo further serious work was done at college
until examinations came in early March. He attended
the last meeting of the Chrestomathic Society that he
40
HOMEWARD FROM HOME 41
loved so well, sad at the thought that his school days
were over. For the last time as a student he went
through museum and library and heard Dr. Smyths
preach in the dear old Second Presbyterian Church.
Then he writes the names of his classmates tenderly in
his diary and ends his college life.
Shortly thereafter he left Charleston for his father's
pastorate at Fairview, where he arrived on his nine-
teenth birthday.
Here he spent an uneventful summer reading and
writing and thinking and planning. It was a summer
of constant wrestling with resolutions and frequent
complainings at his inability to keep them. He finds
time, however, to study farming at this country manse
and describes his present earthly horizon thus :
" I purpose raising a fine supply of blackberries and
seeing if I cannot in some manner improve the breed.
I pray God above all other earthly comforts to grant
me a sweet wife, an affectionate charge and a good
chance at gardening. With these I think that I could
lead a peaceful and contented life and rest in God for
all things else."
And here also, ever observant of the heavens, he en-
joyed, unconsciously, an experience rarel}'' given to
mortals. With characteristic interest and care he tells
the story of it in his journal :
"About a week ago when I happened to arrive
home at midnight, I noticed in the east a streak of
light beginning in the horizon and well defined almost
to the zenith. What was it ? Was it the zodiacal light
or was it in reality the ring around the earth which
was lately spoken of as discovered by the United States
Expedition in Japan ? Again another visitor has ap-
42 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
peared in our skies— a large comet. Of this little vis-
itant I may speak again, as I have not yet seen it."
" The great comet is now visible just under the con-
stellation of the Great Bear. What thoughts does that
bright streak of light bring over me — thoughts of the
immensity of space, strange thoughts on the inhabitants
of those other worlds — remembrances of the fact that
it is not only on earth that there is life and motion —
startling thoughts of the unsearchable greatness of God
and of our ineffable littleness, and of Christ's great con-
descension. The nucleus of this comet is very bright,
brighter than a star of the first magnitude, silvery light.
Its tail is as straight as an arrow and gradually grow-
ing wider and less bright in its extent of twenty or
thirty degrees. What comet is it ? About this time
in 1858 I saw a comet, brighter indeed than this but
not so long. What mysterious travellers are these ?
How naturally superstitious thoughts cluster around
them.
" The comet is waning in the distance. It seems that
the appearance which I mentioned the other night as
having been the zodiacal light was in reality this comet.
It was then, according to Dr. Gibbes, eighty degrees
in length ; its head was in the horizon."
" The comet of 1861," says Camille Flammarion, the
great French astronomer, "passed at 273,000 miles
from us on January 30th and it is almost certain, ac-
cording to the most trustworthy calculations and ob-
servations of M. Liais, that the earth and the moon
passed through its tail at six o'clock that morning
(Paris time). In fact neither the earth nor moon per-
ceived it, only a slight Aurora Borealis was seen as if
the tail itself were simply an am^ora. The encounter
HOMEWARD FROM HOME
43
SUNDAY, July 7ih. 1861.
(Xruo^mt^ Ctr^eA.
i— « I fix ^ : /I % 0
5^0^«^- fiJ^cwOepjg, /lICSw^'^ *^^^
Page from Diary, July 7, 1861, illustrating comet through
whose tail the world passed without knowing it.
44 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
was only really known and calculated after the
passage."
This experience of passing through a comet's tail
without knowing it was one that he never forgot. On
the last Christmas that he spent on earth he told it to
his grandchildren in Atlanta.
It was on the eighth of August that he received a let-
ter from Dr. Smythe testifying that " Wm. P. Jacobs
is a most acceptable member of the Second Presbyterian
Church of Charleston and believed to be a most worthy
and divinely directed candidate for the sacred office of
the ministry," of which he said, " How very little does
he know about me ! "
And while complaining to himself of his laziness he
planned to write three books ; one was to be a versifica-
tion of the historical Scriptures, a second consisted of a
series of articles on the Evidences of Christianity as
evident in the sciences, and the third was to be a book
on authorship.
Slowly the long vacation passed as he tried a plan
found in the Spectator that he should set down every-
thing of consequence done during a day for later
examination. The following was "Trial week" and
afterwards "Perseverance week" then "Study and
Prayer week," and "Useful week" and "Sermon
week " (he only wrote two pages of it), and "
week." Afterwards the comet and preparations to
enter Columbia Seminary.
Yet during this vacation time many things were
happening in his soul. His interest in literature grew,
expressing itself in poems, stories and articles for maga-
zines and newspapers. He busied himself translating
the Shorter Catechism into Greek, German and Latin.
HOMEWARD FROM HOME 45
In his first month of solitude he heard the news of
firing on Fort Sumter and the beginning of the war.
He read many books of travel and wanted to follow
Stephen's footsteps in Egypt and stand on the summit
of Cheops' great pyramid some day. He heard his
father preach the baccalaureate sermon before the
graduating class of Marion Female Seminary with de-
light, and of himself says, " I am now throwing away
the best moments of ray life, when my eyes are not
weak and I am not feeble." In the middle of August
his father received a call to Laurensville, S. C, the
county seat of Laurens County, nine miles from a
little place called Clinton, and decided to accept it.
This was the first tiny thread that Providence had
prepared wherewith to guide him to his destiny.
At length September came and one daybreak he
reached Columbia, in company with George Petrie,
recently a classmate of Sidney Lanier's and Ed Green's
at Oglethorpe University, and rode with him up to the
seminary. A few other brethren came in during the
day, among them "my good old friend, Tom Law."
*' It is the habit here," he writes, " to call all the stu-
dents ' Brother.' Of course I find this rather difficult
but not altogether impossible. Those I love most I
find it hardest to * Brother.' "
This was on the seventeenth of September. On
Tuesday morning following the students were ex-
amined on Personal Piety. "Little enough could I
give to satisfy them," he thought, " but still my name
was enrolled."
So he entered upon his theological career, with
Brother Todd, from Laurensville, telling him that he
could find any number of places near there wherein to
46 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
show forth the talent that was in him ; with Brother
H offended because he would not listen to long
yarns on the Sabbath but insisted on reading the New
Testament to all who would tell them ; complaining
ever that his spirituality was weak and planning to
write a book on some consoling topic of religion to
leave for his posterity. Of this last he writes a hope
which was a prophecy. " I want it to be small," he
says, "and yet my whole life to be spent in elaborating
it so that every word will be worth printing and every
sentence a gem, and yet I wish it so fixed that if I die
next month (year) it will be ready for publication. I
want to leave something to posterity, so that even in
my death I may be useful to my fellow men. I hope
that this will not turn out to be a mere idle chimera of
my imagination."
On the thirtieth of October he made his first appear-
ance before the faculty as a public speaker only to be
criticized unmercifully. His matter was poor, his man-
ner bad, his pronunciation unsatisfactory, his position
wretched. He received no syllable of praise. Only
George Petrie said that he liked his speech. There
seemed to be very little hope for him as a preacher.
But he would try to do better next time.
In November he passed the terrible ordeal of Pres-
bytery after Dr. Howe had proposed his name. His
college examination was the thing he most feared.
Dr. Leland gave him the first five verses of Luke's
gospel to read and the first paragraph of I Cicero
against Cataline. After this followed such searching
questions as "What is Natural Philosophy?" " What
is Astronomy?" "Is Chemistry a useful Science?"
^' What is a Satellite ? " " What is the Solar System ? '?
HOMEWARD FROM HOME 47
On motion of Dr. Howe the examination was " Sus-
tained."
The same month he finished reading through the
ISTew Testament in the original Greek for the first time
in his life.
In this month also he preached his first sermon.
This is his story of it :
" At the request of Brother Otts I went up to Tekoa,
a mission station on the Charlotte road, to preach. Just
after breakfast I hurried over to the depot and got on
some cars which were about to leave. I soon found,
however, that I had not got on the passenger train but
on one carrying up soldiers. I knew, however, when I
reached Tekoa, by Killian's mill-pond, and, though the
cars were at full speed, I had no intention of going up
to Charlotte, so off I jumped, ' flying squirrel fashion,'
and down I came full length. I jumped up, however,
and found that my neck was not broken and went over
to the church. I conducted the Sunday School and got
on very successfully until the very close, when the choir
leader, who was singing ' Old Hundred,' gave out and
1 was obliged to sing alone the last two lines, though
I had never sung a line unaided before in my life. I
believe I changed the tune completely before I got to
the end. I was very cold in the pulpit — chilled, chat-
tering, and, though my sermon was written, I managed
to get considerably wound up on ' Jesus wept, and the
Jews said, " Behold how he loved him ! " ' After serv-^
ice, however, I felt very cold and exhausted and walked
over to Mr. Killian's, and he gave me a glass of black-
berry wine, which relieved me. I thank God that He
enabled me to do as well as I did. There were two or
three out of the twenty present who seemed to listen
48 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
with a great deal of attention. I managed to get
home— Tutus Mente et corpore."
With the closing month of the year came the meet-
ing of the first General Assembly of the Southern
Presbyterian Church which convened in Augusta, Ga.,
on December third. He was engaged to report the
Assembly for the Southern Presbyterian, by Dr. Adger,
who offered him fifty dollars for his services in that
capacity. Nor did Dr. Adger leave him unaided.
*' Dr. Adger," he writes, " is making Dr. Palmer, the
Moderator, act parliamentarily and yet very much not
so. He made a little speech the other day in which he
suggested that it would be of much service to the
reporter if he would call out the name of each mem-
ber as he rose. Dr. Palmer, though he has no right to
know that there is a reporter in the house, has, on one
or two occasions, turned to me and said, *That is
Dr. , Mr. Jacobs.' I ought to feel flattered.
Judge S said to me yesterday, 'The gentleman
who spoke last was Judge S ,— it is well to know
these little things.' I assured him that I knew his
title and would give it to him. Mr. R said to me,
' Take a good look at me, Mr. R , I intend to make
a speech some day and I want you to know me. You'll
remember it ? ' ' Yes, sir, a little better than you
think. There is a great deal of human nature in
men ! ' "
This first meeting of his Assembly made a deep im-
pression on him who was thus flung into the very midst
of things at the very outset of his ministerial career.
It gave him great pleasure to meet many friends of his
father and he was thus early made to feel at home in
his father's house. He noted carefully the leaders of
HOMEWARD FROM HOME 49
the Assembly, — " Dr. Palmer," he wrote, " is beautiful,
Dr. Thornwell is strong. Dr. Palmer is polished, Dr.
Thorn well wonderfully earnest, Dr. Palmer is refined
in thought, Dr. Thornwell is broad, deep, clear." He
was interested when a Mr. Frierson, of Tennessee, asked
for some of his photographic reports, making him write
in it, — " Wm. P. Jacobs to the Tennessee Historical
Society," and saying that it would some day be of
great value to them, and he was saddened by reports
of the great fire which swept through Charleston
lowering the venerable head of the old Circular
Church, the proud Cathedral and Institute Hall,
mother of Secession. " And thus," he tells his diary,
" have I again arrived at the termination of another
year — a year fraught to me with even richer experi-
ences than the last — a year wonderful in changes to
myself and our family. This year has closed forever
to me my college life and has made me an artium
baccalaureus. In this year I have gained rich ex-
perience in life — have passed through one of the most
eventful periods in the history of the country. I have
seen stars fall one by one from the flag of the once
glorious United States. A new nation has arisen upon
the earth, the Confederate States of America, and I am
a citizen of it — proud indeed of the honour. A bloody
year to our land has this been. The first echo of the
mighty struggle was sounded in my ears on the 8th of
January. ISTews of thrilling interest has continually
flown on lightning wings along the wire — at Sumter,
at Bethel, Springfield, Belmont, Port Royal, Manassas,
Leesburg and Drainsville the hosts of contending
nations have met and fought and bled, and Southern
arms have won the field by God's strong aid.
50 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" But not less important to me also has been this year.
I have stood since the lirst day of January last on the
ever sounding banks of the Atlantic and watched its
proud waters lash a new Republic's shores. I have
sped over the wide prairies of Alabama and floated
adown its majestic river. I have stood too in sight of
the wondrous mountains at Lithonia and have gazed
adown the ever rolling waters of the Savannah.
" But in another aspect my life has been marked by
this year. In it I have begun my lifelong studies —
things new and strange — and have met minds of other
men and learned to know them. Happy the thought
that I have made some friends this year.
*' I have been received as a candidate for the gospel
ministry and have preached my first sermon — besides
doing other first things ; not least important, I have
written my first book and had it printed. I have done
much in the publishing line and I have attended and
reported the first Presbyterian General Assembly.
" Many other things could I mention which God has
done for me, but are not these enough ? And now the
year is gone. Have I profited from my year's ex-
perience ? To me a solemn question is this.
" A year is gone — a year nearer to that bourn from
whence no traveller returns. Oh, Lord, so teach me to
number my days that I may apply my heart unto
wisdom. Farewell to 1861."
In this resume of the year we see revealed the man-
ner of youth he was — a youth who watched life, noting
all its changes and counting them wonderful; a his-
torian feeling himself unknown and alone though he
was a part of all the vast drama whose story and stag-
ing he witnessed ; a traveller, watching hill and valley
HOMEWARD FKOM HOME 51
and longing to see the lands beyond the mountains,
the cities beyond the seas ; a student who loved study
for what it brought him of the Father's wisdom-
treasures ; a printer whose first tiny " Book of Reptiles "
set and printed by himself as a youth of fifteen, con-
taining seven hundred and twenty-eight words on
twelve 2^x4 inch pages, has expanded and grown into
poems and stories and ambitious book-hopes; a time-
keeper, numbering his days that he might apply his
heart unto wisdom, and a patriot.
We expand that word into a paragraph. Far back
in December, 1858, his father being a slaveholder,
when a student of sixteen he w^rites in his diary,—" I
have come to the conclusion that slavery at best is a
diabolical practice."
Almost a year later, three days after he had entered
a telegraph office for the first time in his life, he describes
a violent debate in the Senate of South Carolina, which
he was reporting, on the subject of Harper's Ferry, and
adds : " I was awfully a Secessionist but now I am a
strong Unionist. I would not see one quill plucked
from the wing of that proud bird which is emblazoned
over our Senate hall."
But when his state seceded and battle came with the
customary stories of horrible atrocities, his heart and
prayers followed his new flag. The reader must have
already noted that Love was the charmed word of his
vocabulary and he loved South Carolina.
THE WAY TO BETHANY
Speak of the woods that darken, here, my way,
Thou dear old memoried road to Enoree.
Interpret to my heart the wondrous play
Of wisdom on the path One builds for me.
Tell of the bridging of a thousand streams,
The passing of the mountains, undelayed ;
Of bird-thronged meadows, spread for him who dreams,
The River, waiting, when the end is made,
And then, beyond the Mill, the Bridge, and then
The Land to which He calls —
"Whither, O builder of the Ways of Men,
Whither — beyond the Falls ?
IT is an exceedingly difficult thing to see God but
it can be done.
Heraclitus used to say that "knowledge of
divine things was for the most part lost to us by in-
credulity." It is this difficulty of seeing them that
renders us incredulous of their existence.
As life runs on, for a long time w^e seem to have
around us only the homely, familiar sights that, in our
ignorance, we are pleased to call common, till the
change comes and, suddenly, the inexpressible glory of
what God has been doing is upon us.
There is something very strange about life. We
learn after the event. It is from change that wisdom
comes.
So to-day we can look back to that Sabbath morning
in May, 1862, on a young, inexperienced and unknown
52
THE WAY TO BETHANY 63
minister riding on a borrowed horse to fill an ordinary
appointment at an ordinary country church and see
around his head something of a halo, as if the old red
and muddy road led upward somewhere to an ineffable
glory.
For is there anything more fascinating than watch-
ing what happens to a man who truly gives himself to
God?
Powers invisible, inaudible, intangible begin at once
their work of transforming the common into the ro-
mantic, the sinful into the holy. They light the way-
side bushes with the flames of God. One by one all
things swing into a line of progress towards something
that Some One sees Somewhere. Nothing is ever again
unimportant. An accent may decide a destiny.
And so it was with the young man who was going to
preach the second sermon of his life at Bethany that
day. Some one had once suggested his father's name
for the headship of the Laurensville Female Seminary,
to which position he had been later elected. Upon his
acceptance, as his custom was, he began preaching in
weak and vacant churches thereabout. Among these
was Bethany. When one day his son from the semi-
nary came home on a visit, never having preached but
once before in his life, he pitched him out in this water
to swim by himself. All this was simple enough, com-
mon enough, humble enough, and it was done so quietly
that the youth could suspect nothing ulterior in it.
Indeed when he wrote of it in his diary this is all he
saw :
" Early this morning, being Sunday, at Father's re-
quest, I got Brother Riley's horse to fulfill Father's ap-
pointment at Bethany, ten and one half miles distant.
54 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
The day being very cloudy, I found the ride there very
pleasant though quite fatiguing. After riding five
miles I stopped to inquire the way and was told by an
FRIDAY. D«e«mb«r "inih, 1661.
l4wvo 1^^-U^ %''^'"*^ ^^ *^*^~^
**^ o\ <liu two
r^
UT^a^l-e^.^*^
Public buildings of Laurens as he found them in i86i,on
his first visit.
old lady that Bethany was yet ten miles off. That I
knew could not be so, and was gratified, a mile farther
on, to find it but five miles off. Inquiring my way as
I went, thinking over my sermon, communing with
THE WAY TO BETHANY 55
God and my own soul, wondering at the vicissitudes of
life, watching the pretty bh'ds that kept continually
flitting about me, — the sparrows and partridges and
plenty of similar game, I passed the time pleasantly
enough until I reached the church. There I became
acquainted with the elders, and Eider Byrd bade me
take my own way. One old gentleman, an elder from
Duncan^s Creek, suggested that as it was raining I
should be short. I must confess that I trembled a
little as I ascended the pulpit stairs and that on several
occasions my wits forsook me and fled. Once or twice
I felt my courage oozing out at the tips of my fingers.
The congregation was very large considering the
weather and I got considerably warmed up on the sub-
ject— ' Who among us shall dwell with the devouring
fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting
burning ? ^ When I concluded old Mr. Saxon cordially
invited me to dine with him and I accepted his invita-
tion. On reaching his house, young Mrs. Saxon ex-
tended the welcome and I did justice to her good
dinner. I had occasion to speak about their souls' con-
dition to two negroes, one of whom seemed deeply
touched by the morning's discourse, — the other was a
member of the church. As it had now cleared off, I
bade Mr. and Mrs. Saxon good-bye and thanked them
for their kindness. My ride home was not so pleasant,
as I was continually in danger of losing the way, and
both I and my horse were nearly exhausted. Never-
theless, I had many pleasant thoughts. Thus was
preached ray second sermon. May God give me grace
to preach with power and with the sjpirit. I reached
home in the evening, almost tired down, and found
pleasant company awaiting me there."
56 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
And so, unknowing and unknown, he passed along
the wonderful way by which he was being introduced
to his whole future life. From those strange homes on
the right hand and on the left were to come experi-
ences rich and good and from one of them, the one at
the end of a long road winding off to the right as he
went, was to come half of his life. A little river was
to the left of him as he neared the church, a river that
he was to frequent often as the shadows of even fell
about him, and over the valleys to the right lay a little
town that he was to love as his own soul.
These things he did not see as he rode alone on his
way to Bethany, yet all his yearnings and prayers and
hopes were in them. For these he had pleaded in far-
away Charleston and of them he had dreamed on his
beloved Edisto. He had been impatient for them at
Marion and despaired of their ever coming at Columbia.
For these he was come into the world — for Bethany
and Duncan's Creek and Shady Grove and Gilder's
Creek and Clinton and Rockbridge. He and they
were to go down life's pathway together watching the
wonderful things that God and years and the souls of
men and women work out between them.
Any one who has seen an artist lay the background
of his painting upon which all the future outlines are
to grow, or watched a sun rise slowly out of the night,
can understand that ride to Bethany.
For the broad outlines of his life were laid down that
day.
Here was a student of Latin and Greek and Hebrew
and metaphysics and history and astronomy and all the
rest of God's wonderful world, and yet such a student
as had once decided that he would dash all these de-
THE WAY TO BETHANY 57
lightful studies aside if that would make him a better
guardian of the souls of men, a city boy who loved
libraries and museums.
And here was the muddy roav' leading to the four
bare walls of a country church.
And therein was his prayer answered.
Over this road he was to ride to all that the world
held for him of happiness and service.
Soon he was preaching at Smyrna and leading the
prayer-meeting at Laurens and filling Brother Eiley's
appointment at Shady Grove. What if the elder from
Duncan's Creek should suggest that he cut his sermon
short on account of the rain, and the old lady at Shady
Grove exclaim, " Pshaw, he's nothing but a boy ! '* the
great thing was being accomplished, he was giving him-
self away.
And the gift was being accepted !
And in order that the record might be all the clearer
his city life of academic and literary flavour with its
ante- war luxury was to contrast with the desolation of
a country community overwhelmed by the vast catas-
trophe of fratricidal strife. He who had worshipped
in the beautiful old churches of Charleston was being
led to Shady Grove and Duncan's Creek. He whose
life had been spent in alcoves of libraries and museums,
who thought in terms of cathedrals and colleges, was
within two months to preach his first sermon in Clinton.
For Brother Holmes, having heard how acceptably
he had filled the pulpit at Shady Grove and having
himself been called away, had secured his promise to
preach at Clinton on July 13, 1862. This is how he
tells the story of it :
" About eight o'clock Mr. Holmes sent a vehicle over
58 THE LIFE OF \YILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
for me. I mounted and was soon on the way to Clin-
ton. On the way, I resolved not to preach the sermon
I had prepared but to preach the very first one I ever
wrote on — ' Jesus wept, etc' On reaching the door I
found the congregation already assembled, and after
various introductions I succeeded in beseeching a Mr.
Rose to raise the tunes for me. He at last complied
and did finely. I preached with earnestness and I trust
that I succeeded in overcoming the feeling of ' Is not
this great Babylon that I have built,' which often af-
flicts the minister. I lost sight of self and caught sight
of Christ. Invariably will the minister find this to be
the case— first, lose yourself ; second, find Christ. Both
are coordinates, one of the other. The negroes were
very earnest and attentive, and many of the whites,
nay, most of the whites, were also. I trust some good
was accomplished and I hope no evil. I took dinner at
Mr. Phinney's, and a good dinner it was.
" I started home immediately after dinner and feeling
sleepy I gave the reins to the boy. After a short doze
I raised myself with the sensation that we were at a
halt. Sure enough, we were at a standstill, the boy
was asleep, the reins in the bottom of the buggy and
the horse quietly grazing by the roadside. 'Why,
Billie,' said I, ^ this will never do ! ' He started up sud-
denly and soon we were again on the way. I watched
him closely for a while but as he seemed to be wide
awake, I again began to doze. Suddenly I felt a severe
jar— the buggy was down in a gully, we were nearly
upset, the boy had been nearly pitched out and both
traces had been unloosened and the horse was about to
walk off — the negro had gone to sleep again. After
that I kept my eyes open and we reached home in safety.
THE WAY TO BETHANY
59
Presbyterian map of Laurens County, taken from his Diary,
showing conditions as they were on July 13, 1862, when he
preached his first sermon in Clinton.
60 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" I met Mr. Adams again and he says I must come
down to Shady Grove next Sunday."
Now is not all this ordinary enough to be God
Himself ?
What a wonderful thing is this Providence that
closes our eyes to the future and opens them to the past !
He had visited the scene, the very church wherein
his life was to be, and his eyes were veiled — as are ours.
But we see already the broad outlines of certain fig-
ures wherewith his Great Desire was being answered.
One of these was poverty. The stage was being
stripped of its costly scenery. Museums, libraries, col-
leges, orphanages were being removed and only the
bare floor and walls were remaining. Evidently here
was a play that was to deal in the elementals. Life
was to be its theme without veneer or varnish. Souls,
his among them, and God were to come upon that
stage when these extraneous things had disappeared.
The greatest calamity in all its history had fallen upon
the theater in which he was to play his part, nor was
its real work yet finished. Ashes were there and
mourning and blackness of every shade.
This was the gift that was being returned to the boy
who had given himself.
And with it came all the marvel of the ordinary
which is utterly fathomless in mystery. There was
nothing uniquely attractive about the land in search of
which he had left his beautiful Ur of the Chaldees.
There he would find no purpled mountains nor silver
sands upon any seaside. Only the country was there
as God made it and a few disfigurations made by man.
Laurens County, Clinton, the countryside and its
churches were utterly ordinary, with nothing in fauna
THE WAY TO BETHANY 61
or flora to distinguish them from other common coun-
tries ; lacking any of those special natural beauties of
ocean or lake or mountain range, with only here and
there a muddy stream to remind him of more beautiful
landscapes.
These were the two colours that the Great Artist had
already placed on the canvas of his life.
But thereby was his prayer answered for therein was
his soul to be satisfied.
As his country, his town, his churches were utterly
ordinary, so also were they utterly typical, and in that
lay the artist's meaning.
No man could ever say of him, " See how he was fa-
voured by environment and witness the great forces lying
latent waiting for him to use them." He was to have
no tools, no means, nothing but the common possessions
of the humblest believer in the Power.
Without glory, without reputation, without friend-
ships, without health, without wealth he was going into
a land crushed, desolated, impoverished, discouraged,
decimated and at its very best poor and ordinary.
So that if, in all the years to come, there should be
shown by him any unusual thing, any remarkable evi-
dence of special power no man could ever question his
testimony — and God's.
And this is their testimony ; that they gave them-
selves to one another.
VI
PUTTINa ON THE AEMOTJE
Like him of trembling heart who fain would try
To tread the waters of a stormy sea,
Amazed that w^aves a willing path could be
For those who hear the whisper : It is I.
ON many a desperate sea the mariner of old
used to cry to Neptune, " O God, Thou mayest
save me if Thou wilt, and if Thou wilt Thou
mayest destroy me ; but whether or no I will steer my
rudder true ! "
This is the high resolve in the lives of the truly great.
It came to fuller expression in his life during the
remaining years at the seminary.
Again it was a handicap that made it possible for
him to finish his course there. He suffered from amau-
rosis of the eyes and was thereby eliminated from the
army, those so suffering being accounted unfit for mili-
tary service. An idea of the pressure being brought on
all citizens to take up arms at this period of the war
may be obtained from the attitude of Dr. James Henley
Thorn well, the great leader of Presbyterian thought of
his day. Of him he tells us that on the 28th day of
the preceding February Dr. Thornwell had delivered
one of the most stirring patriotic addresses he had ever
heard. " He tried to rouse the people up to a patriotic
spirit and make them feel the greatness of the crisis
that had fallen upon them. He bade them remember
Thermopylas, Marathon and Salamis and gave a soul-
stirring description of heroic Greece. He most terribly
62
PUTTING ON THE AEMOUR 63
rebuked the ' mean, despicable, contemptible wretches,
who could make their country's loss their own gain,' —
and bade every man to take his gun, and if he had no
gun, his pistol, and if he hadn't that, his hatchet, his
hoe, * anything that will kill,' and go and defend their
wives, their daughters and their sisters."
And so as the autumn of '62 came and the hour for
leaving his father's home in Laurens drew near he
writes :
" I have gotten into a stern fit of the blues at the
prospect of my early departure for the seminary under
such circumstances. How can I leave Father or Mother
or good, dear Aunt Becky ? How can I say good-bye
even to Lula or dear little Mamie ? The little moist
drops will wash the corners of my eyes and if I try to
whistle, my whistle sticks to neither treble nor bass
but flutters mournfully about. Even my hands thrust
themselves nervously into my pockets. I had a mourn-
fully prospective dream last night which appeased my
anxiety to return no little. How changed will be
everything there ! How very changed ! How very,
very changed ! The bare thought is sufficient to sadden.
The lively, merry Cozby and Banks and Otts are gone.
Witty Brother Cleveland, with his songs and tales,
gone Green, McKinnon, Law, gone, gone, all gone.
Only one or two left and they doubtfully left— all the
rest gone, gone forever. I'll shut the page. I do not
like sad pictures or sorrowing scenes. I do not like to
dwell on that which only grieves me but I cannot bear
the thought of eight solitary months. God grant that
I may be happily disappointed in my unpleasant fore-
bodings."
This frame of mind was doubtless accentuated by
64 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
the bitter news received on August 2d of the death of
Dr. Thorn well. His death had come suddenly, of " ty-
phoid pneumonia," at Charlotte, N. C, on the preceding-
day. The young man considered the older the greatest
man in the Southern Confederacy. " Good-bye, Brother
Jacobs," he had said as they parted at the close of the
spring term of the seminary. " May God bless you and
take care of you." " I will prize those Avords," wrote
the young minister, "as the blessing of the greatest
man I ever knew." One of the first pleasures of his
life upon his return to Columbia was "hearing Dr.
Palmer deliver his eulogy on the life and labours of
Dr. Thornwell, in the Presbyterian Church, to a house
that it would not be very hyperbolic to style — jammed,
jammed. For two hours and a half he spoke of the
glorious man and the audience hung on his impassioned
words with breathless attention. His own frame quiv-
ered with emotion and the heart chords of his audience
thrilled to his masterly touch. Not a word was lost of
that grand eulogy of one great man upon another and
while he spoke I felt continually — how awful is the
loss ! In glowing words he led the youthful Thornwell
from his native Chesterfield and set him amid judges
and chancellors in a president's chair. He drew an
outline of his character — his filling-in showed the hand
of a master artist. His simple style of reading, as any
other man would read, was completely lost sight of in
the grandeur of his periods and the overwhelming
majesty of his expression. Deep, silent, grand flowed
on the monarch river — and men felt while he spoke.
And when he spoke of the death of the immortal man,
of his comparative silence, of his stupor and the few
words that escaped his lips, we wejpt. He told how in
PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR 65
his last moments smiles of unspeakable beauty played
around and over his countenance, and only single ejacu-
lation of * wonderful, amazing, expanse, expanse, ex-
panse ' told of the glorious foretaste of immortality he
was enjoying. And his closing words led us up through
the shining gates of heaven and showed us the seraphic
Thorn well in immortal converse with Beza and Calvin
and Luther, with thousands and thousands that sit
about the throne, so that even a gladdening smile came
over every countenance, the murmurs of discontent
were hushed and for a moment we were persuaded to
rejoice that our Thornwell is in heaven."
When he arrived at the seminary that fall he had
found only one other student besides himself : " Brother
Porter." " Brothers Hunnicutt and Boggs " came a little
later. The autumn was largely to him hard study in-
terspersed with victories, outrages, prisoners, sermons
on the ^' Invincibility of the South " and the " Army of
Beelzebub," with such other war news and propaganda.
" I have all my expenses provided until January ! " he
happily exclaims, yet one day in weakness and sickness
he faints in his room at the seminary.
Pittacus said once that the half is ever greater than
the whole. He found it so that year. " I do not enjoy
pleasure half as much as labour," he writes, and here
and there through his journal there appears the sen-
tence that seems to have been more than any other his
life motto, " Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek
them not ! "
He was so thankful for the little he had. " I have a
fire to sit by," he writes, " and books to read, and I
know where my food is coming from for three months.
For all this I thank God \ "
66 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
In February of '63 his beloved brother, Pressley, of
whom, as a little boy, he had written in his diary, '' Oh,
that Pressley would find Him I " came home on sick
furlough. Some one had indeed remembered those
earnest lines in the tiny book and answered the prayer
they expressed. Before the following summer had
passed we find him writing sadly :
" Oh, my God ! that Thou shouldst cause me to write
what this day must be recorded. My brother, my only
brother, has been snatched away by death. God of
Mercy, how can I endure Thy chastenings ! Lord, Thy
stroke has fallen upon me like the strokes that Thou
alone canst give. He fell at Gettysburg the 2d of
July. He fell fighting gallantly with his face to the
foe. I cannot realize it, I cannot believe it. I thought
he would be spared to see me again, and I longed to
embrace in my arms one who had been so lately made
to me a double brother — a natural and a spiritual. The
stroke is heavier than I can bear. What a bereaving
year has this been to me — one brother dead, another
worse than dead. Of the four, I alone am left. Oh !
Pressley, Pressley, would to God I could have died for
thee, my brother. Why hast thou too departed and
left me alone to weep ? Dead ! Dead ! Oh, my God,
Thou art terrible in Thy chastisements. I cannot
write. All I can do is to cry. My God ! My God ! "
On March fifteenth of 1863 he came to his twenty-
first birthday. It was to him, who so often thought
of time, an ominous and awful hour. A new chapter,
a new book begins in that hour. Its caption is " Man-
hood Begun" and its text, "Fear not, I am with
thee. . . . Seekest thou great things for thyself,
seek them not. . . . Jesus Christ and Him cru-
PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR 67
cified." In the solemnity of that hour and thought he
takes up the full burden of manhood, saying :
'^ I give myself wholly to God,
I give myself wholly to the ministry,
I utterly repudiate self, sin, Satan,
I live for the good of the world,
I live for God's cause on earth,
I live for the world to come.
" I will call nothing mine but God, no man Master
but God, no place home but Heaven, remembering that
all is momentary that delights us, all is momentary that
afflicts. All that is not eternal is nothing.
*' Oh, God, it is indeed a solemn thing to take up the
duties of life. Grant, great God, that this worm that
pleads with Thee may become great in Thee. Let me
know Thee and Thee only, and as this Sabbath day on
which I attain to manhood is holy to Thee, oh, let my
whole life be one continual Sabbath to Thee. Let me
live Thee, let me breathe Thee, and not have a single
thought that is not in accordance with Thy will, from
now henceforward, forever. Bless me with humility,
purity and truth. Let me become a perfect man, a
perfect Christian, a perfect preacher. In every joy or
sorrow, in sickness or health, life or death, oh. Lord, do
Thou rule. Open Thy word to my mind and heart.
Let King Jesus rule within me. Let the Holy Spirit
bless me and guide me into all truth and comfort. Do
Thou dispose my whole earthly career just as Thou wilt
and enable me in everything to say, * Thy will be done.'
Oh, Father, hear me and answer Thy servant's suppli-
cation. Seal Thy answer upon my heart unto sanctifi-
cation by the Spirit, having purified me by the blood
68 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
of Jesus, and to Thee, oh, Father, Son and Spirit, three
in one, be praise forever. Amen."
In this spirit he became a man. His environment
and heredity, reacting upon his education and they to-
gether upon his inmost soul, had produced this net re-
sult that he considered himself a tool. His conception
of a tool demanded use. He wanted to wear out but
never rust. He was ready now for his life's toil.
And so one Tuesday in April '64 the Board of Trus-
tees of Columbia Seminary met and resolved to dis-
pense with the usual examinations of his class, that is
Brother J. S. Arbuthnot and himself, stating that their
diplomas would be forwarded later. In the meantime
he had visited his dear old Charleston once more to be
licensed in the lecture room of the Central Church
where Presbytery was meeting, and visiting incident-
ally the old college scenes and viewing the defenses of
the city. He had later been called to preach at Gilder's
Creek, which, with Shady Grove, constituted his first
regular charge. Soon a letter from his father hints
that Clinton will try to obtain his services, and one day
while he was preaching at Shady Grove two gentlemen
from that village, Messrs. Phinney and McClintock, ap-
peared, and the call came later. Brother Holmes ad-
vised him to accept. He ended 1863 by his father's
fireside in Laurens and early in 1864 agreed to preach
twice a month at Clinton and once each at Shady Grove
and Duncan's Creek.
He left the war-stricken school of the Prophets with
its handful of students with sadness and regret.
" I am no longer a boy but a man," he thought ; " with
my untried armour I go forth to battle. How shall I
endure the conflict ? "
YII
IN THE UPPEE EOOM
How like to him, forth summoned as he bent
Beneath his fig tree, musing on his deed.
To marvel when he learned whereto would lead
The path that followed where His Master went.
THEEE is nothing more astonishing to those
who study the lives of great men than their
apparent consciousness of something unusual
about their talents and careers. " I know that I shall
be a great poet " said Sidney Lanier in an hour of dis-
appointment and obscurity.
So, here and there in the life of our hero we catch
glimpses of this same consciousness, evidenced in plan
and confession as if he knew himself to be a great soul
whose life rather than whose words were important to
the world.
When the little upper room at Mr. Phinney's, where
he first lodged in Clinton, had been occupied and the
books all unpacked and shelved and arranged ; when
he had taken charge of his parish and was about to
begin his first visits to his people, he sets before him-
self his task, resolving " to try to fit myself for a perfect
fulfillment of all the arduous duties of life no matter
where I am called."
As we look back on the life of this man in whose
career so many wonderful things happened, our eyes
catch the gleam of this fine hour, white as no fuller on
69
70 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
earth could whiten it. The soul of this boy of twenty-
two years, in his tiny, desolate village of five years'
growth, over whose pathway the gray ashes of war
were sifting, is yet aglow with God.
" I am here," he writes, " here seated in my same old
study chair, with my table beside me and books and
maps about me. I am waiting for the Spmt of God,
waiting for Him to fill my heart with faith and hope
and love. It is the fifth of May, a day full of heart
burnings and strong resolves, a day of earnest cries to
God, a day of the past, the present and the future.
Eternity is flitting before me, heaven and hell are
spread out at my feet. I am waiting, waiting ! Oh,
God, let me be working. Why do I tarry ? Thou art
waiting, waiting for me to come and invoke Thy pro-
tecting care. Lord God, I come here, here on this
bright sunlit morn, I come, throw myself upon my
knees and pray. ... I am now ready to work."
There is something awful about this, his utter con-
fidence, his absolute faith, his childlike trust, con-
trasted with the abysmal night of war and discourage-
ment about him, for there was not in his surroundings
a single element of the good cheer customarily so
considered in the thoughts of men. Everything with
which he had to deal was little, cheap, common, so
measured. He had to do with persons and places and
churches of no importance to society or state. Yet he
faced his surroundings as if wonder were in his eyes at
the glory of their every feature.
This was his great wisdom, for it was even so.
He began his work in Clinton on May 5, 1864, and
on May 22d had organized a Sunday School with eighty
scholars, twenty-seven of whom were in his Bible
IN THE UPPER ROOM
n
Class. He was ordained on May 20th, Rev. Zelotes L.
Holmes, whose missionary efforts had organized the
church, charging the pastor, and J. R. Riley, the young
pastor at Laurens, his county-seat, "spake well and
feelingly about paying the preacher."
By Monday morning following he was on his way
to Columbia to buy some books for his Sunday School
Clinton, as he drew it in December, 1864.
library. On Tuesday, August 12th, he started a
weekly prayer-meeting but had to do all the praying
himself at first. His first Presbytery met at Cross
Hill where he was entertained by Mrs. Nance. It was
November before he had married his first couple.
Dr. Craig and Miss Lizzie Owens ; his first fee was
fifty dollars (in Confederate money) and he remarked
ruefully, " I have no wife to give it to." The same
month he ordained his first elder. Dr. William H.
Henry, over the Clinton Church and succeeded in
borrowing a melodeon from Mr. Rush Blakely for use
in the church. By that time he had triumphantly
Y2 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
placed the Southern Presbyterian in thirty homes and
had well begun his lifelong task of boosting Clinton,
toiling for his institutions and preaching the Gospel.
To this last he had set his whole soul with a devotion
that burned away all dross.
" I feel almost as though I had done nothing," he
mourned. "While I have received but seven, my
neighbours at Hurricane seem to be having a large
revival. Surely ray sins are ruining these churches
and yet I am puffed up in my own conceit. I feel that
the Lord is getting ready to humble me. I have been
striking ten, eleven, twelve, and the next strike must
be One ! I feel almost ready to give up. I am foolish,
lazy, ignorant, conceited, proud. Oh, God, give me
light. Help me or I fail. Why have I undertaken
this work ? I cannot go forward. I dare not go back-
ward. Lord, save or I perish." This was in August,
1864.
In this thunder-cloud lurked the lightning that struck
swiftly and suddenly the following month. Then
" The Lord has certainly been with me," he exults,
" and that in a marvellous manner. We have just held
our protracted meeting at Clinton and forty souls have
been added to the church. Besides this, there are yet
between twenty and thirty inquiring the way of salva-
tion, some of whom I doubt not will be added to us.
Oh ! how grateful I am to the prayer-hearing God.
See how He answers prayer : I prayed before the meet-
ing just this way and in these words, ^ O Lord, add
three souls to my church, — Father, be merciful and
give me ten. No, Lord, Thou art able to do a great
thing as easity as a small. I pray for forty. Oh, God,
in Thy great mercy add forty souls to this church ' —
I]S[ THE UPPER ROOM Y3
and the Lord answered my prayer to the letter. The
first day three were added, the second day I had ten,
and before the meeting closed we received precisely
forty ^ not one less or more. Is not this a remarkable
answer to prayer ? Surely I need never doubt again ? "
Does one open his eyes in astonishment at this
strange coincidence ? Is there wisdom in it and re-
ward ? And is it a tiny drop of liquid gold smelted
from the fire of soul struggles and agonized prayer ?
Has the tiniest hint of a halo begun to form about the
head of this devoted boy ? Is a word about to be
spoken through him — an old, old word ?
When he had written the story of this wonderful
thing in his diary he added : " Oh, I want so much to
be a true, noble-minded Christian ; I am a theoretical
Christian, I want to be practical. My love and faith
are worse than weak — and yet I do love and do
believe."
Many a person before and since has faced the forks
of that road but how few have turned to the right !
Having put first things first he then turned to take
an inventory of the town into which he had come. He
names its assets over one by one :
" Stores — Dry Goods — Phinney and West, Hayne
Williams, Huett.
Groceries — Copeland and Bearden, Wm.
Rose.
Assorted — Craig andTobin, Mess. Bailey.
Buggy Factory — W. D. Johnson.
Wagon Factory — Robert Huett.
Harness Factory — Richard Huett.
Blacksmithing — Johnson, Huett, Young.
Carpenter Shops — W. B. Bo wen, Geo. Davidson.
Gin-Maker and Tinner — Geo. Davidson.
74 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Steam Saw-Grist and Flour Mill— Joseph Crews.
Shoe-Shop — D. T. Compton, Geo. Simpson.
(Colored) Nelson Hood.
Schools — Male School, Rev. Theo. Hunter.
Female School, Mrs. R. Dunlap.
Churches — Presbyterian and Methodist.
Hotel— Joel T. Foster.
Masonic Lodge, No. 44.
Physicians — Dr. Lon Harris, Dr. Wm. H. Henry,
Dr. Richard Dunlap.
Millinery — Mrs. Burgers, Mrs. Huett.
Tailoring — Wm. Butler.
Not to mention a railroad which, unfortunately, is
not in running operation."
All these were in little ^vooden shanties, the only
brick building being a barroom.
So he set about wdth his plans for the community.
There was a little school called the Clinton Male
Academy. This he proposed at once to improve and
endow. For the church he desired to introduce the
taking up of collections and otherwise improving her
benevolences, and for the negroes, who were soon to
begin an unaccustomed freedom, he was already plan-
ning— a church.
This was the mind of the little minister in the upper
room at the Phinneys' as he began his service. With
such a soul he stood ready to meet the other players
whom the author would send upon the stage. He was
to pass through the long gamut of siren voices and for
more than forty days be tempted of evil. From the
paths of men he was to choose his own, oftentimes in
darkness but rarely in doubt. Already the things he
thought and felt and did made him a solitary figure
seeking something few wanted in a way none under-
IN THE UPPER ROOM 76
stood. All things that he passed on his way he valued
in terms of that something ^on a scale that was accepted
only here and there where a kindred soul counted his
gold as gold and his dross as dross. He is already
launched upon a unique life. Only time and the ele-
ments are needed to mould him into that strong and
beautiful figure which he was to be.
And as we see him there upon his knees in the upper
room, so quiet, so lonely, the face of a little boy in a
great city seems looking down on him in wondrous joy,
a little boy who loved phonography and rare coins and
colleges and museums and libraries, a little boy whose
lips used so often to repeat : " Seekest thou great things
for thyself ? Seek them not I "
YIII
<<MY MAEY''
Was thy wondrous beauty lent me
As a thing complete, to charm ?
Or was mystic meaning sent me
In the glory of thine arm ?
Was a mightier music meant me
In the rapture of thine arm ?
ON the road from Laurens to Bethany, in the
northeastern part of the county, stands the old
farmhouse in which she was born. It is a
typical southern " Gret House," with its central hall
and rooms on either side. To the left as you enter is
the living-room, whose big open fireplace added com-
fort to so many years ; to the right, the parlour where
the family portraits hung, their thoughtful eyes follow-
ing you around the room. In the rear of the former
was the dining-room with a kitchen attached. Up-
stairs, bedrooms.
From the front piazza a long straight road, bordered
by orchards on either side, led the eye to the Bethany
road. There a little girl could sit and watch the occa-
sional traveller going lonely on his way. The front
yard was full of shrubbery, crepe myrtle, weigela, and
the sweet breathed syringa, with violets and blue iris
here and there.
A fence guarded the yard on all sides and by its posts
76
"MY MARY^' 11
in front of the house the bee-gums with their myriad
virgin bands whirred all summer long about their sun-
lit task of gathering sweet nectar from the flowers.
Further to the right a great spreading scuppernong vine,
that had long since covered its trellis, bore its luscious
burden not far from a giant oak beneath whose shade
the teams were often hitched or the riding horses
mounted. The garden lay to the rear and a half dozen
barns and outhouses by the lot for the stock. As one
looked eastward it could be seen that the house was on
the crest of a high hill from which a steep path led
down to a spring which gushed out from beneath great
rocks and ran singing away to the sea.
And so they named their homestead " Coldwater."
Here, in the days " before the war," there lived a
country physician and planter. Dr. James H. Dillard,
whose fathers had received their land grant direct from
the King of England, and to him and his good wife
there was born on October Y, 1843, a little girl whom
they named Mary Jane.
Then the years passed as the physician went about
his task of healing the sick and directed, with the aid
of his wife, the affairs of the plantation. Winter and
summer came with Santa Glaus and school and vaca-
tion ; spring and autumn with seed-time and harvest,
until the little girl had become a young woman, her
school-days at the Laurensville Female Seminary behind
her and the high dreams of womanhood in her soul.
Then one summer day the crops were laid by and all
the countryside, saddened by the gloom of a failing
cause but happy in their season of social intercourse,
was attending the " Big Meeting " at Rocky Springs
Church, where the beloved Rev. Zelotes Lee Holmes
rs THE LIFE'Or WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
(the same whose missionary effort had gathered the lit-
tle band who organized the Clinton Church), was
preaching, aided by a little minister who had but lately
come to the community.
On that day, while he was in the very pulpit itself,
this boy with the Great Message saw a woman's face,
and loved her.
And when the sermon was done he searched her out
from the crowd because he had seen his joy in her eyes.
And when shortly thereafter he had gone back to the
lonely " Upper Koom " and had time to think he wrote
it all out in his diary. He noted that she was beauti-
ful— and a member of the Presbyterian Church ; that
she was a teacher in school — and an elder's daughter ;
that her excellent education expressed itself in perfect
English — and in true Christianity ; that her voice was
surprisingly sweet — and she could raise tunes in church ;
that she was a fine housekeeper and acquainted with all
details of domestic economy (all this he had found out
by a visit to her home) — and a member of the Bible
Class ; that she played the piano — and visited the sick ;
that she was innocent and of good family, — and tried
to curb her temper.
This was in August, 1864. Afterwards it was a
swiftly accelerating pursuit. Visits to "Coldwater"
alternated regularly with " big meetings " at Shady
Grove and Duncan's Creek. The great revival at
Clinton followed shortly, drawing the whole country-
side to it. He saw Mary there. But shortly there-
after when he went to her he found that she had been
thrown from a buggy the day before and her shoulder
injured. Twice thereafter he was foiled in his attempt
to see her. It was a long ride and there might be little
"MY MAKy Y9
hope. " What shall I do ? " he exclaimed. " Shall I
give up ? No, never ! "
For the days were long and the battle fair. So the
road to " Coldwater " often felt the hurried hoofs of
his horse. Hope and despair rode with him alter-
nately. The great wonderful thing called Love had
overwhelmed him. There had once been a little girl
on Edisto Island whom he had liked very much and an-
other in Laurens. Indeed, '' My journal makes entirely
too many revelations," he complains. " It is a regular
history of all my love scrapes. Suppose Mary says
'No' when I ask her? I have had chicken love
a-plenty in days agone but this is the first time in my
life that I have ever fallen a victim to man-ly-love.
What a strange emotion is this. ... I never
knew before what love was. Mary is everything that
I could wish, in health, form, features, behaviour, name,
family, domesticity,— there is absolutely nothing more
that I could desire. In piety, education, manners, she
satisfies me entirely. ... If she gives me the
word of welcome then, Mary Dillard, you will have
one heart to love you better than you were ever loved
before."
And God who, following His ancient custom, had
created his hopes that they might be gratified, pros-
pered his journey. After January the twenty-sixth,
1865, he could write happily, " My Mary."
For he knew the Giver. " God has blessed me," he
exclaims, « more than I could have hoped ; He has grat-
ified my most earnest wishes. Indeed I feel that He
has made the whole thing to come out just as it has.
I trust Him, I love Him the more for it. And then
, Mary, she is so good, so everything that I want. My
80 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
greatest wonder is that she ever did say ' yes.' Oh,
God, consummate this union and pour out Thy blessing
upon it."
There you have the heart of the man. And here : —
*' To-night I am to be married. . . . God who
has given me the gift will, I trust, make me worthy of
her. I would have His love to be the chief link be-
tween us so that Heaven will be evermore desirable."
Who else would have thought of that, then ?
" My thoughts are all of Mary," he writes. " No
earthly object shall be superior, or is now, in my affec-
tions, to her. It may be that God shall allot to us a
life of suffering and pain. If hers be the lot to suffer,
God give me the power to be to her kind, sympathizing
and affectionate. If mine, I know the tenderest care
will be bestowed upon me."
On the 20th of April, 1865, the night on which offi-
cial news of General Lee's surrender was received, they
were married at Cold water. As the division of their
country ended they were united. It was almost wel-
come news to the war-stricken South that did not know
how dark a night of Reconstruction they were enter-
ing— in April too, when the wood-thrush had but lately
returned to his valley, flying over the great Southern
Gulf to do it, when joy was athrob in the song of the
polyglot mime of the tree top, and all Heaven breathed
from the crimson azalea and the pink crab-apple bough.
Down the long lane from the road to little Bethany
the guests came, " Brothers Arbuthnot and Todd " of
seminary memory and " Jim Sloan and John Dillard "
(her brother) — these were his attendants, and her sister
Sallie with Maggie Pitts and Lucy Byrd and Annie,
these were hers. His father came from Laurens to
Mary Dillard Jacobs
« MY MAEY " 81
perform the ceremony and thereafter Mary belonged
to him and he to her.
So they go to rent a little home from Mr. Bell, con-
secrating it with holy prayer, deep faith, and high
hope as the pillars of State fall about them and their
tiny village trembled under the shock. But, after all,
their search was for a city, not made with hands, eter-
nal in the heavens.
Many long years afterwards, when the little minister
and his sweetheart lay side by side in the village grave-
yard and all the anxieties of earthly love were over,
they found a faded package of old love-letters in the
drawer of his desk in his office. The few letters that
she had written him before their marriage were there
and among them the very first in which she had dared
to call him " Dear Willie " and sign herself, " Your
Mary," ** Again," she wrote him, " I find that I have
undertaken the task of writing to one that is dearer
than all others, yes, dearer than life itself, and yet I
fear that you will doubt what 1 have just said, — no you
will not doubt it, for you know that you have the un-
divided love of Mary and have promised to believe all
that she says. . . . Can it be possible that I
merit such love as is bestowed on me ? A voice from
within whispers ' unworthy,' but I trust, one of these
days, to prove to you that I am worthy of it."
With such sweet and quiet dignity she took her place
by his side.
IX
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH
A few more steps ! Ah, this the wondrous stone
With which a thousand battles have been won ;
The rounding of a hill, a corner turned,
And lo, the world is changed, the darkness gone !
EPICTETUS used to define difficulties as the
things that show what men are. " Have this
thought ever present with thee," he would say,
" when thou losest any outward thing, what thou gain-
est in its stead ; and if this be the more precious, say
not, I have suffered loss."
It is a singular and meaningful fact that the spiritual
experiences of all creators are the same. Those who
build pass through the like vicissitudes. The}^ have
the same friends — courage, faith, hope ; and the same
enemies — fear, jealousy, dismay. This is the reason
why a great good man is so rich a gift of God. His
life is a parable, a deed-prophecy to all who would fol-
low his example. The story of it speaks a word in
season to him who is weary. Their victories shine
like stars at the crossing of the ways. Their experi-
ences induce faith in the theory that the sun will rise
after the darkest night. The circumstances may be
different, the figures larger or smaller but the battle is
won along the same line and the soul-struggle of the
stone mason is the same as that of him who builds with
brick.
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 83
So it happens that in every good novel there is a
dark chapter.
The story of Wm. P. Jacobs from the year 1865 to
1872 is the story of a man fighting for his life. It was
a period of loss and the slow desolation of reconstruc-
tion, of delayed hopes and increasing difficulties. In
that period he learned the meaning of patience and for
years stood face to face with failure.
So a great door and effectual was opened to him —
for there were many adversaries. It was the great
period of his life and at the end of it he did the great
deed of his life.
It is as if he had written on every page of his diary
during those long bleak years the inscription he penned
on another day. " A memorable day, a day of sorrow
— of unutterable anguish — a day of agony — of work —
of vows. Thank God for this day — thank God for this
day — thank Him, thank Him ! "
They rented the Bell house and before they had
finished its repairing dedicated it to God. " I will try
in every way," he planned, " to make my family a
model for Christianity, morality, punctuality, regu-
larity, industry. Mary is of the same opinion and of
course it depends only upon us whether it shall be so
or not. She is a jewel of a wife. I sit here and look
at her sweet face and industrious fingers and thank
God for such a treasure. The blessings of Heaven rest
upon thee, Mary ! "
But outside the day was dark. The state of the
country was one of utter paralysis. The war had
ceased, he had taken the oath and was striving to do
his duty as a faithful citizen of the United States. In
December, '65, they moved to another house, E. G.
84 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Copeland's, " right under Mr. Phinney's nose." As the
year closed he bravely hoped that Clinton was improv-
ing and listed her stores and shops.
Then came 1866. As it opened he laid his plans and
two months later became an editor, founding the True
Witness and setting up the first printing press in
Clinton. In this, his brother Ripley came to help him.
He still is working for the church benevolences, the
male academy, the public library and the coloured
church. He puts the " Ladies' Benevolent Society " on
foot. He is offered an A. M. by Charleston College
and thinks of going to get it. Clinton becomes an in-
corporated town once more, and he thinks the railroad
is reviving. For six months it had been utterly dead.
Negro riots have begun, the crops are poor and war has
broken out in Europe. In the midst of this he writes :
" God has blessed my family. On the 1 1th of April a
dear little cherub was added to our fold. God bless
our little Florence Lee. She is pretty and good."
Towards the close of the year he and the mother and
child made an overland trip to Washington, Georgia,
to see his father who had accepted the presidency of
the female seminary there. Upon his return he con-
tinued the protracted meeting begun before he left.
"Forty more have professed conversion," he exulted,
" and of these many gray-haired men. On Thursday
night all the new converts sat down at the Lord's
table. Heaven came down to earth and dwelt among
us. ... I failed to go to Synod this year. Cause,
without the means. Thus has God brought me to the
end of 1866."
The same dun landscape framed the story of the fol-
lowing year. In March he received his A. M. degree
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 85
from his Alma Mater. In April Presbytery met with
him. In May the Ti'ue Witness becomes the Farm and
Garden. In June his garden was said to be the best in
Clinton. He was sick almost all of August. In De-
cember came a death and a marriage. The marriage
was performed by himself, being that of his sister-in-
law, Sallie Dillard to Bob Kichardson, "and dear
mother, Mary's mother, whom I loved next to my own
sainted mother, passed into Eternal Life."
When the New Year came it found the world still in
turmoil. Indeed he was so distressed that he expressed
the wish to leave America if possible. But he de-
clined a call to Albany, Ga., saying that he could not
leave his people, and in July he began the erection of
the first two-storied house in Clinton.
Faith is most needed in the dark.
So 1869 came and we get a picture of him as he toils
onward in the night :
*' I write from home, my own home, the home of my
dear wife and children — for God has blessed me with
another child, little Eugene Ferdinand, now four months
old.
" I write from home, for I have built a home, have
dedicated it to God and I am in my study surrounded
with books and papers. Ought I not to be contented
and happy?
"My family is full— father and mother, son and
daughter, Ripley and Minnie,— yes, little Sissie, now a
young lady of nineteen, is with me, and will probably
stay all the year. I have just brought her from Co-
lumbia (February 9th), where I spent an exceedingly
pleasant day in Dr. Adger's house. I visited Dr.
Plumer and Dr. Woodrow. I have also George May —
86 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
my little farmer, and Sallie Dillard, my little help and
companion. God help me to be just to them.
" The Farm and Garden has entered upon its fourth
volume — prosperously. I am becoming encouraged
about it and am determined to give it as high a stand
as I can.
"My churches — Clinton Church has recently been
beautifully fitted up, new pews, curtains, lamps, carpet.
It is as neat as a pin, I still preach at Bethany and
Shady Grove, but my principal labour is in Clinton.
Prayer-meeting every Thursday evening. Preaching
every Sabbath night. Session meeting once a month.
Preaching and Sabbath School and Bible Class every
second and fourth Sabbath. I am about to begin to
preach to the negroes once a month in the afternoon."
By December, 1869, he had resigned both Shady
Grove and Duncan's Creek and was giving his whole
time to Clinton. He thinks the town is improving and
conditions getting better.
" I am gratified with the improved condition of our
Sunday School. It is the Church. I accomplished as
much by it as by the sanctuary. Lord Jesus, let Thy
showers fall on it also.
" I think our negro church will be built this fall
We have bought a lot just out of the town and hope
to build this fall. When I get in it then my next effort
shall be a church library; or at any rate a library
association for Clinton. And after I get it under way
I think we can build up the 'Clinton Presbyterian
Academy.' "
Hope deferred had not made his heart sick.
But the darkness grew denser. "Poor little Clin-
ton," he exclaimed, in 1870, " what is to be done for
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH
87
her ? We are distressed and harassed on every side.
The present political disturbance is greatly against us.
Can I do nothing for the advancement of Clinton?
Every man must live for something. I have hardly
any plan before me in life. Is not this the cause of
my disquiet and unrest ? Oh, my soul, what means
this sadness ?
** These are stormy days wherein we dwell. Last
The Clinton of 1870.
night after the sweet pleasure of the Holy Sabbath we
were startled by rumours of an attack on Clinton by
the negroes, two hundred of whom had gathered at the
mill, entered Joe Crews' armoury and armed themselves.
The whites assembled at West's store to the number of
seventy-five, and having armed themselves awaited the
attack. The poor women were scared half to death
and many of them assembled at Mrs. Phinney's for
protection. By God's good providence a collision has
been thus far averted. But the races are in a highly
88 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
excited state and I fear that evil will yet result
from it.
"August 21st. We have had a time of it. The
whole cause of the fracas was the collision of a party
of white and coloured men near Clinton on Saturday
night. The negroes fired on the white men. Their
fire was returned and four were wounded. The
negroes quickly assembled at the mill with four
days' rations. A difficulty had also occurred at
Chappells. But Sheriff Paysinger with a company of
one hundred men captured sixty negroes there without
bloodshed. The whites immediately began to assemble
at Clinton and by eleven o'clock yesterday over a
thousand men had assembled on the public square,
whereat the negroes became very much alarmed and
agreed to go home and behave themselves. By night,
however, a hundred negroes had again collected, the
whites having dispersed, but they were notified by the
guard of fifty whites who had been left in town that
they would all be arrested unless they dispersed im-
mediately, and they immediately began to scatter. So
ends the affair, I trust. They have threatened to make
a San Domingo of South Carolina, but no San Domingo
here ! "
In September Dr. Henry died. " Clinton has lost its
best elder," he wrote, " and I my best friend."
And in October he exclaims in dismay, " Our rail-
road has stopped ! "
Afterv»^ards came the climax. At the election on
October 19th the negroes were accused of cheating,
Yiolence followed. The citizenship flew to arms.
Strong men seized the guns of the negro militiamen.
The ofiice of the notorious Joe Crews was torn to
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 89
pieces. A reign of terror followed. The Eadical
probate judge was found dead at Milton's trestle, be-
tween Laurens and Clinton, and a coloured member of
the House of Eepresentatives at Martin's Depot. In
the Eocky Spring neighbourhood two negroes were
killed. " Oh, wretched country," he mourned, " how
terrible is this condition, violence, anarchy, civil war !
I know not what to think, much less to do. The end
is not yet. I fear this is but the beginning. Our
whole land is thoroughly demoralized ! . . . This
poor little town is growing gradually less and less.
Oh, God send us help for Ciiurch and State ! "
Then he starts a PJionograjphio Magazine to help his
brother Eipley. He is called to Anderson but says :
" I cannot leave Clinton."
But the sweet face of his Mary was near and little
Florence was " singing all around the yard ' God save
me ' " — he could trust in God.
So when the first Sabbath of the year 1871 dawned
it found him in his little pulpit preaching on the text
" Brethren, stand fast ! " The railroad was uncon-
scious, being nothing more than a streak of abandoned
rust, but he had received a letter from Joe Crews say-
ing that as he was a young man he might live to see it
built. He himself was "Whistling to keep up his
courage '^ for he admits that he is badly discouraged
and faces the possibilities of giving up. Early in '71
sixteen men were taken from jail and hanged in Union.
" God help our poor land ! " he exclaimed. In October
President Grant proclaimed Laurens County to be in a
state of insubordination and KuKluxism and threat-
ened them with martial law. The great fear con-
tinually grew in his heart that he might be forced
90 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
to leave Clinton. The population of the tiny village
steadily lessened and all things seemed hopeless.
Such was the great hour of his life, the hour than
which none had a finer spiritual value. Step by step
he was being brought to the supreme test as if Some
One were trying to taste of his spirit to find out what
quality He might expect of it in the long years to
come.
His little town had a total white population of all
sizes and sexes of one hundred and seventy-six. As he
counted them all up in his note-book he remarked,
" The town has been at a standstill with premonitory
symptoms of galloping consumption." He knew him-
self to be " surrounded by an uncommonly demoralized
state of affairs," so he called upon himself " to make
this year one of unprecedented toil." He toiled cease-
lessly, reaching constantly for a heavier hammer. His
is a story of a man exceedingly anxious about the de-
tails of the progress of the Kingdom of God. In the
midst of all his darkness he was called to Good Hope,
Alabama, on a salary nearly double what he was
getting.
That was the crisis.
Here was a young man, efficient, popular, laborious,
a student and excellent preacher, being constantly
" called " to " better " fields.
Here was a village, retrograding with no improve-
ment to be seen anywhere as it passed through days of
utter dullness. " Her streets are deserted," he wrote,
" the stores have no customers, families speak of mov-
ing away. I feel convinced that all or nearly all of
those I love the best will be gone by another year. Is
it my duty to remain when in all probability it will be-
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 91
come impossible to support my family here another
year ? I leav e this matter entirely to Thee, my Heavenly
Father. My wish is to remain here. God has pros-
pered my work. My church has been built up but now
it all looks as if it were going to ruin."
And here was a church barely able to pay him his
seven hundred dollars per year irregularly, though the
minutes of his Presbytery showed that it stood fourth
on the list as regards members received ; ninth in total
of communicants (omitting negro members; counting
them— third) ; first in number of infants baptized ; third
in amount actually paid the pastor ; and eighth in aver-
age per capita of money given. Seven years before it
had been at the bottom of the list.
And there were his family — a wife and two little
children to be considered, and in this very year he writes :
" March 8th : At four o'clock this afternoon another
responsibility was placed upon my shoulders. A little
boy, nameless, but not friendless, found his way through
much tribulation into this wide strange world." Then
he added, in verse :
'^ Eest, little one,
Upon thy mother's bosom, pure and white ;
Clutch it with little nails that glisten bright ;
It is thy throne.
No king in royal robe delighteth more,
Than thou dost in its boundless luscious store.
" God bless thee, child !
And may thy mother, who in pain did give
Thee life, aye, a full thousand fold receive,
Thou undefiled !
Full recompense of love for all her woe.
Which, little debtor, thou to her dost owe.'^
92 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" Dear Lord, bless this little one and may he be a
child after Thine own heart."
So he found his problem on his knees.
And it was as if Some One whispered in his heart,
" Seekest thou great things for thyself ? Seek them
not ! "
" I believe that God has a purpose in locating me in
Clinton," he concluded, '' and I am determined to work
it out. This little church may yet be a center of Pres-
byterian influence. Oh, that I had strength for the
work before me. I live for labour. It may be that an
impetus may be given to things in this locality during
the next year — this is a fine center for work. I am in
hope that it will grow to be a considerable place yet.
God grant it. If so, I will never expect to leave it, but
to labour here till I die."
"They w^ho sigh for a larger field of labour," he
adds, " do not properly take care of the little field they
already have. Make your field larger and more at-
tractive, my dear sir, and study more, visit more, write
more, pray more. You are in great want, but action,
energy, faith, perseverance are the main things you
need. I have declined the call to Good Hope Church.
For thee, dear, dying Clinton, let me now labour with
untiring exertion."
This is the flower in the crannied wall which if any
man understands all in all he knows *' what God and
man is."
And he knew when he made that decision that
it was the " moving choice of his life." All that came
afterwards was but a commentary upon it. Each deed,
each fight, each defeat, each victory, each thought, each
feeling of his soul was but an illustration of it.
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 93
So day by day he planned and toiled. Here is the
story of such a day ;
He rose early, built fire, attended to horse and other
stock. Read (Greek) Testament, Hebrews 8-9 ; Phono-
graphic Bible, 1 Cor. 1-5 ; Hebrew, Esther 9 ; Syriac,
John 9 : 1-10 ; Latin, first eclogue in Yirgil, three pages
in (German) " Maid of Orleans," wrote up session-book,
note-book and journal. Read fifty pages in Osborne's
" Palestine," visited Miss Sallie's school, hired freedmen
for next year. After dinner : Read twenty -four pages
PhonographiG Correspondent^ rode up to Geo. P. Cope-
land's and had a pleasant chat with Miss Mary and
Louis Bell. Interviewed Brother McKittrick. After
supper read the Home Journal^ thirty pages of Phono-
graphic Correspondent, two of Bacon's * Essays in
Phonography,' family worship ; retired."
And in that hour of desolation and black hopelessness
he did his great deed, sprung from his great thought,
fired by his great feeling. It is embodied in the last
couplet of a few lines of poetry he penned in that dull
November :
^* In Thee, oh, Lord, I trust,
My shield art Thou, my stay,
Man boasts j— his strength is dust,
But Thou art life alway.
In Thee, oh, Lord, I live,
I have no stay but Thee.
My solace in deep grief,
Thy hand, it raiseth me.
Oh, stay by me, my Lord,
Each hour my strength renew,
Defend me with Thy sword,
Me with thyself imbue.
94 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Thank God, He knows my name,
Thank God, He hears my prayer,
Now let my tongue cry, shame !
Up, man ! In God's strength, dare."
It did not matter to Him who waited for that resolu-
tion which of many tasks he should pursue. He had
been tested. Things would now happen.
It is interesting to note the way they began. The
month before he had written in his diary :
" 'Nqw improvements— a fence around the Methodist
Church, work on my house, new steps to Copeland's
store and the lodge, a new kitchen at Charlie Frank-
lin's.
" September 5th. The Laurens people say they are
going to build a railroad from Laurensville to Augusta
and throw away ours altogether. If so, good-bye
Clinton. It is not altogether certain, however, that
talking about a thing accomplishes it. I still live in
hope, although Clinton is surely and rapidly wearing
away. We need something to revive us and I do not
know any help for it save the L. R. R."
This was in September. On November 26th he
penned these memorable lines :
*' I have a project in my head which, like many other
projects, is, I fear, to be finally unsuccessful. I propose
the establishment of an orphan asylum under the care
of the South Carolina Synod, the same to be placed
here and to be taken care of by the Presbyterians of
South Carolina. If I were a man of faith and energy
I could easily carry it into effect, but as I am only a
little man, with hardly zeal enough for my daily avoca-
tions, were I to undertake it it would be a signal fail-
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 95
Three days later he had declined the call to Good
Hope and taken up his task anew in Clinton.
And as he went on his way, the a»gels of God met
him.
The turn of the year came. Eighteen hundred and
seventy-two passed. His birthday dawned.
"March 15th. Thirty years old to-day," he writes.
" Realize it, I cannot. How time flies and how little
have I accomplished — nothing absolutely. I have
made for myself no name — I have done still less for
God — nothing as I ought. No, let me not talk in this
strain. I can never become great. I have not the
talent of a leader. I must abide here in faith and
patience and fill the little place that God has bidden me
occupy. The smallest screw is of vast consequence in
a great and complicated piece of machinery. How do
I know but that I am such a screw ? I once thought
that I would become great. Good-bye forever to such
folly. I now trust that in quiet God may allow me to
do in this retired place much towards building up this
little village in grace and in the knowledge of God. In
some mysterious way He brought me to Clinton, has
bound me to it, and I will bide His time in patience.
Was a little inconsequential village ever yet raised into
notoriety and importance through the talents and
labours of one man ? Hie labour, hoc opus est— but is
it not a noble thing to do ? May not he say with just
pride — ' Exegi monumentum aere perennius,' who, by
his own God-blessed efforts, builds up a church, estab-
lishes a fountain of Christian life, reclaims a village
and raises it to a standard of liberal enlightenment. I
cannot do much, but cannot I set others to work, not
all in one day but gradually, until at last Clinton be-
96 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
comes a center of refinement and true life. Sursum
corda ! God help me."
There is someChiug about leadership that requires an
abandonment of self^a renunciation of ideas of great-
ness or any other form of personal advantage. The
besetting sin of the mighty is to love glory. This man
had once thought that he would become great and had
now bidden good-bye to such folly. This renunciation
was the finishing touch to his character. It was the
final element needed.
He thereby became great.
This is a very paradox of God.
X
THE DAY OF SMALL THII^GS
So this I grave that they who read may know :
Wherein I struck for that whereof I dreamed,
Yet dreamed I not, nor struck, to all that seemed
This is the key : His will hath made it so !
THE inability of the human mind to think fur-
ther is called infinity.
As we walk about the earth one thousand
miles seems a long distance, and twenty-live thousand
miles, the girdle of the earth, very far indeed. But
two hundred and forty thousand miles, the distance to
the moon, opens the door to space and ninety-three mil-
lions of miles, the distance to the sun, has already
passed our real comprehension. Light, that travels one
hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second, can
bridge that immense gap in only eight minutes, yet the
nearest of our stars, Alpha Centauri, is so far away
that it takes between three and four years for its beams
to reach us. This from our neighbour in space. For
the others in our universe the Universal Wisdom alone
knows how many centuries would be required.
And beyond our universe, what ? Dim clusters of
suns, such as M. 13 in Hercules, other universes light-
ing the byways of God in His infinity.
The tiny speck of dust that settles on your coat
seems pitifully little by comparison. But it is not.
If for the telescope, the eye that sees afar, we sub-
97
98 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
stitute the microscope, the eye that sees near, we are
astonished to find that we are not at one end but in the
center of infinity, " whose center is everywhere and
whose circumference nowhere." He who first turns his
view on the infinitely little as he first upon the infi-
nitely large, exclaims with Keats :
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a ecw planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes,
He stared on the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent upon a peak in Darien. "
For the astonishing fact is that nothing is little. A
lens makes a planet of a grain of sand and a larger lens
reveals an atom as a solar system its ions revolving
around their central sun. That which lies within is as
illimitable as that which lies beyond. If beyond the
violet He rays no eye may see, so lie others within the
red. If the world is full of notes above the highest
earthly treble, so is it with others below the lowest
earthly bass. There is nothing little, not even the day
of small things.
The young minister of Clinton had ceased his pursuit
of Greatness and was content to paint the scene from
his own doorway, to look into his own heart and write.
Kot that all trouble ceased. On the contrary the
" KuKlux Persecution " continued, coming to a climax
in the arrest and deportation to Columbia for trial of a
dozen or more of his little flock. After so long a time
they were released, but not without great disturbance
of conditions in the village and many anxious months.
He followed his prisoners to their jail, to comfort and
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 99
pray with them, and considered that day was breaking
when they returned safely home.
But early in 1872 Dr. T. J. Boozer, a praying elder,
moved to Clinton, and shortly afterwards Mrs. Jones
and Miss Amanda Ferguson, indicating a turn in that
distressing tide which had borne so many of his people
westward. His heart beat faster at the thought of this
and took courage to suggest that the time was ripe
for the establishment of a "Male College, i.e.^ High
School " in Clinton.
Our Monthly, the successor to his little Farm and
Garden, he now made more purely religious and soon
lie was trusting and thanking God that it had about
two hundred and fifty subscribers. There was soon a
report that the railroad might rise from the dead, and
after a while the post-office was reopened so that Clin-
ton could have her daily mail. This was in June, the
month he resolved to visit every member of his congre-
gation and " talk up " three great plans : first, the divi-
sion of South Carolina Presbytery; second, the high
school; and third, the orphan asylum. Good things
kept happening. Mr. Green began running his mill
again. His church could make an improved report.
He gratefully recorded that " By the Minutes of Pres-
bytery just published the Clinton Church stands fourth
in number of members received last year, twelfth in
total membership, sixth in number of children in Sun-
day School, second in funds given for education, first
in number of children baptized, fourth (with township)
in salary, ninth in total amount contributed, seventh in
average per capita, and was the only one which filled
up every blank in the statistical report. Pretty good
for the church that eight years ago stood about at the
100 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
bottom of the list of the fifty-six churches in nearly
everything."
Then the Clinton High School Association was or-
ganized with property to begin on worth a thousand
dollars, and three hundred dollars subscribed to improve
the building.
Nichols Holmes accepted the principalship of the
high school. The village improved slowly and he
notes the following list of families in his parish for the
coming year's work :
"Presbyterian: Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jacobs, R. S. Phin-
ney, S. L. West, A. M. Copeland, J. T. Foster, Dolly
Williams, Mrs. Patton, Mrs. Compton, Mrs. Owens, R. R.
Blakely, R. N. S. Young, Dr. Boozer, L. H. Little,
E. T. Copeland, R. H. Williams, W. B. Bell, M. S.
Bailey, J. S. Craig, P. Monjoy, N. Pyles, E. H. Bourne,
C. E. Franklin, N. A. Green, G. R. Davidson, G. C.
Young, T. D. Newman, T. Y. Harris, Dr. W. C. Irby.
"Methodist: Mrs. Butler, Sim Pearson, T. Sloan,
W. A. McKelvy, A. Clark, C. M. Ferguson, W. J.
Leak, N. S. Harris.
" Baptist : W. A. Rose, Mrs. Yarnett
" Jew : A. Caspary.
"Total: Forty."
And in July, 1872, he writes this resolution in his
diary : " If one dollar is offered me for the Home of
the Fatherless this month or one child is tendered me I
will take it as God's call to this work, and if I enter
upon it then my lot is fixed for life in Clinton."
"I have almost come to the conclusion that it is
my duty to go ahead in the matter of the * orphan
asylum,' " he added. " I wait for the first dollar to
be given me towards it, It will require five thousand
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 101
dollars to buy a lot and build such a house as is needed.
But my Father owns all the kingdoms of the earth
and He is able to supply richly all the needs of His
little ones. He is specially the helper of the father-
" I have been reading Muller's ' Life of Trust,' but
I cannot say that I agree altogether with him in some
of his points. I do not believe that it is either lack of
faith or a sin for believing Christians to own houses
and stocks. What would become of the world if all of
us were opposed to holding property? Who would
have houses to rent to us if nobody owned any ? But
at the same time I accept two of his propositions:
first, we are God's almoners ; second, God answers the
prayer of faith. I own a house, I receive a salary and
it is right in me to do so, but my house and my salary
are the Lord's. I use them in His service. I could not
serve Him unless I did own them."
But the dollar was not given nor the child. So late
in July he thinks it his duty to give up the orphanage
until he is more ripened in Christian experience. He
sees two great reasons against his attempting it : his
exceeding littleness ; and second, the great expense ;
and two for it : first, the great need ; and second, God's
willingness to help those who try to serve Him. He
could not rid his mind and heart of these last two and
kept thinking of getting a little ledger to present to
the orphan asylum. Amid his prayers for a railroad
and peace from the KuKlux persecutions he offers the
petition constantly, "Oh, Lord, help me about the
orphans and show me what to do ! "
How slowly that prayer was answered by Him whose
glory it is to conceal a thing so that man may glory in
102 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
finding it out ! Everywhere he kept talking about it
until his session took it up and Mr. Phinney, the good
old beggar for the village, promised to try to get some
money in New York to begin things with. If he got
anything they were to break ground. If he failed,
nothing more was to be said about it.
He failed ; they did not break ground but more kept
being said about it.
And after so long a time when the urge of God
would not let him alone, he gave himself, which was all
God had been waiting for. " Thou leadest me," he
cried. " Oh, God, is it Thy will ? Shall I write it ?
Then so be it. Tliy home for the fatherless children
sliall be founded. Dear Lord, use 7??^."
And though it took a half century and another gen-
eration to tell which words of that prayer should be
underscored, it is plain enough now.
So on October seventh he drew up the plan for
the orphans' home, naming it the " Thornwell Orphan-
age," in memory of good old Dr. Thornwell. Then a
meeting of his session was held, the little church court
whose faith and judgment was not to be despised, and
on the following day he wrote ;
" Well ! the thing is done. Last night the meeting
came off at my house and it was unanimously agreed
to go to work to build the orphans' home at Clinton,
to be known as ' The Thornwell Orphanage.' Oh ! my
God, give me courage to face the thousand and one dis-
appointments that I must meet in carrying out this
resolve. Help me to work not for self but Thy honour
and glory. Oh, my God, prosper this work. Grant
that it may succeed and that there may arise light to
us. Dear Lord, oh, please, for Jesus' sake, relieve the
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 103
disturbed state of our country and give us our railroad.
Eestore the peace and harmony of our church and help
us to work with our whole heart for this blessed cause.
Father ! Father ! Father ! I have ventured my all—
my present, my future, all reputation, all honour, all
advancement. Lord, it is for Thy sake. Prosper me,
my God, or if I go down, still prosper the work. Bless
the work and bless my dear wife so that we may strive
together for this holy purpose."
"And now for work— writing, printing, reading,
speaking, courage, heart."
Do you not think that any kind of a God at all
would have heard that prayer ?
And though His answer came quickly no one knew
what a wonderful answer it was. He often told the
story of it, thus :
" Back in the seventy's of the last century, a little
boy came to my door. He knocked. I opened and
there he stood. It was cold. It was winter. The
snow was on the ground. I did not know whose little
boy this ten-year-old youngster was, but I saw that he
looked as if a good fire and a good breakfast would do
him no harm. ^ Well, lad,' I asked, ' and what can I
do for you?' His answer almost took away my
breath : ' I wish you would give me a home, for I have
none.' I stood and looked at him. Why, here was a
wonderful thing — a little ten-year-old boy, in this gen-
erous, lovable, beautiful state of ours, and no home
and that on Christmas morning ! Can it be possible ?
"Now, just then, the wind blew out of the north.
The house I lived in faced the north. Whew ! how
cold it was ! ^ Do not stand here talking, little man,'
I said ; ^ come in, come in.' And he came quickly
104 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
enough, I tell you ! What became of that little boy
does not matter to this story, but what he did to me
was enough ! I haven't gotten over that little boy yet
and it was just thirty-six years ago last Christmas that
he said, * I want a home.'
" I thought about that little orphan boy (for orphan
he was, without a father or mother in the whole wide
world), and it is the fathers and mothers that make
homes. For a w^hole year I thought about that boy
and at last I said softly to myself, ' God helping me, it
can be done.'
" But nearly another Christmas day came, and it had
not been done — whatever it was that I had planned so
eagerly. Talk, yes, I had talked about it ; for who
would not talk when there are little boys walking
around on a cold Christmas morning, not only with no
Santa Claus and no Christmas turkey, but not even a
home ! I know what it is, not to have a home on a
Christmas morning, for a very little while. I remem-
ber when I was a ten-year-old boy, on a Christmas morn,
our house was burned, with all my Christmas presents
in it. And there I was. But I had a father and a
mother, and it was not many hours before I had a home.
But think how it felt while it lasted. So I could not
help talking about it. Somebody ought to talk about
it. Talk is very cheap. And with me it was talk and
talk and that was all.
*' At last another Christmas was coming and I still
thought of that little boy. Now, boys are plentiful in
this big world, and they get in the way sometimes.
" Once I saw a little chubby child get in the way of a
car wheel and the wheel ran over him. Poor little lad !
A man ran up and said : ^ What boy is that ? ' And
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 105
somebody answered: 'Don't know.' And the man
said : * Sorry ! Poor little fellow.' And he hurried on
his way. This is the way of it. The world runs over
little boys and is * sorry,' and then the big world just
goes on about its business. Boys are cheap and plenti-
ful. What does it matter if one gets run over now and
then ?
*' But the boy I am going to tell you about now ran
over me. And this is the way of it :
*' How cheery and bright the fire was ! The weather
was cold. It was in the early autumn, but the leaves
were turning yellow and when night came there was a
touch of frost in the air and the pine knots blazed on
the hearth. It was a widow's home in the country, ten
miles, at least, from any town, and I was there for just
one delightful evening. I had noticed a bright little
orphan lad, another ten-year-old lad, and I noticed him
because his name and mine were the same and it was
* Willie.' I am proud of that name, for it has taught
me to say I will, and to stand by it whenever the thing
to do was right. * Now, man,' I would say, ' be true
to your name.'
" I had told the story of that little Christmas wan-
derer and had hinted something about a real home for
such little fellows, not a great asylum, with great
crowds of children in one big house, but cozy homes
like Willie's, and with big wide playgrounds with no
fences to keep the little fellows in, and nothing but love
to tie them to books and duties. You see, dear old
friend to whom I am telling this story, I was just
prophesying of the Thornwell Orphanage.
" Little Willie drew nearer and nearer, so that he
was now standing by me, and presently he laid his hand
106 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
on my knee. The little fingers were tightly shut over
somethiDg and his eyes were earnestly looking into
mine. I put my arm around him, and said to him ;
' Well, my boy, what is that in your hand ? ' The hand
came open at once and in it lay a bright silver half-
dollar, the boy's treasure store. * You are rich,' I said.
^ What are you going to do with that ? ' * I am going
to give it to you to build that home for orphans.'
I smiled. A half-dollar to build a home for orphans !
' Keep it, my lad, and spend it for Christmas ; I do not
want to take your money.' But no, he left it there and
would not have it back.
'' Have you ever read the story of Aladdin's lamp ?
Better still, have you ever read the story of the little
boy's ' five barley loaves and a few fishes and how they
fed five thousand ? ' That single half-dollar grew and
multiplied. It built that home for orphans. It has
brought hundreds of little orphan boys and girls into
the path of duty, of usefulness and, I trust, of happi-
ness. It has led hundreds and hundreds of them to
lives of good and of service to their fellow man« Men
have looked and wondered. Angels have looked down
and smiled. As for me, that half-dollar bound me to a
duty that has held me these five and thirty years.
And as for little Willie, God bless him ! He is not now
a boy, for that was thirty-six years ago. He has reaped
of the Lord's goodness. The Master has returned to
him the half-dollar, I have no doubt, a thousandfold.
I trust the dear Lord is still with him in his home and
blessing him in his business and his store.
" The Lord of the Christmas times, who was cradled in
Bethlehem, has blessed everybody that cared for His
orphans. He blessed the little town of Clinton, that
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 107
gave place to the orphans, and He has made it a grow-
ing little city of happy homes and noble business men,
a city whose business failures are very rare and drunk-
enness and rioting and orphan-making barrooms are
unknown. He has blessed the men and women v/ho
toiled for it, and gave to it, and fathered it, and now
that the great denomination, in which the little orphan
who gave his first half-dollar is an elder, has taken its
home under its care and is making it his own. He is
blessing them, too. Other homes of the kind have
sprung out of its roots and there are many of them now
who care for the little boys and girls who say ' I want
a home'; and many, very many, are the men and
women (they were boys and girls once themselves), who
say ' let me help.' God bless them, every one."
For almost a month that orphan's half-dollar was the
one single reply to his cravings, his toil and his prayers.
Then in November his own little girl, Florence, just six
years old, brought her tiny hoard which she had been
saving for a long while and bestowed it upon his
dream.
With that he had his first little dollar.
There is nothing little, not even the day of small
things. That very night five dollars came from Dr.
Jas. McElroy in far-away Charleston and soon a woman
in Monterey, 111., had sent five dollars more. In the
meantime the Synod of South Carolina had adopted
some kind resolutions about it and many circulars were
being scattered everywhere. These were great boosts
and when his good friend Emma Copeland gave the
orphanage three dollars he exclaimed, " We will build
it yet ! "
For having already learned something of the ways
108 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
of God he rightly heard in these first drops the sound
of abundance of rain.
Soon he was telling the churches of his dream from
their pulpits. In Laurens first, where they gave him
twenty-seven dollars and promised more, and then in
Friendship, where he had been supplying of late, whose
gift was sixty-five dollars, and afterwards in others.
Occasionally a gift would come from the outside
also.
" Little by little the money is coming in,'* he notes.
" In five years there will be money enough on hand for
us to begin."
"Mrs. Riley's little boy, Bickett," he adds later,
'' gave me a gold dollar for the home."
" Per contra, says, * It is a scheme to get some
folks into office ' ; says, ' It is a chimera ' ;
says, ' Not one cent will he give.' "
Encouraged by the steady growth in friends, the
" Board of Visitors " determined to purchase the Will-
iams place as the site of the home, the prettiest spot in
CHnton, over a hundred acres of woodland and meadow,
facing the " Big Road " that led to town, high and well
drained. It was to cost them $1,500, and they knew
it would take much labour and many prayers before
they would get it.
But every day now was bringing little gifts to the
orphanage and day by day the happy goal drew
nearer.
In the meantime he was busy about the work of the
church. He lectured on phonography at the high
school and later began a course in moral philosophy
there also. This was his conception of the relationship
of such work to his calling :
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 109
" I do a great deal of gratuitous labour here but I
do it with an eye to my great work of elevating this
people. My plan of an orphanage is not only for the
good it will do the orphans but also to bring out and
exercise the better qualities of the heart. The library
and the school — I want to educate, one for adults, the
other the youth. Our Monthly is to give the people of
Clinton and all of Laurens a more earnest attachment
to the institutions, especially the religious. From the
pulpit I preach the Gospel, in the Sunday School I
teach the Gospel, and so on and so on "
Such was *' The Day of Small Things " for tiny
CHnton in the year of our Lord 1872, — the great day
of decisions.
Any one is grateful for big gifts, but only the truly
wise are thankful for the small.
They alone know that there is nothing little, that
the big is not the great.
The ninth anniversary of his coming to Clinton
found him busy among these happy tasks for God.
" I believe I will set down here," he says, " just
what has been accomplished that can never be undone,
this too in the face of exceptional and disastrous diffi-
culties, a tremendous war to start with, a complete
financial collapse, a fearful political revolution, the
KuKlux (so called) persecution still continuing, and the
death of the railroad.
" 1st. The church has risen in members from sixty
(white and coloured) to one hundred and fifty (white
and coloured).
" 2d. Instead of eight there are seventy-six baptized
infants on the roll.
" 3d. Instead of $100 the salary is $800.
110 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" 4th. Instead of an annual contribution of nothing
to benevolent causes it is now three and four dollars.
" 5th. Where there was none, a Sabbath School of
seventy-six scholars, twelve teachers and four officers
kept up for nine years.
" 6th. A library of eight hundred volumes.
" 7th. A prayer-meeting originated and kept up for
nine years.
" 8th. Instead of services twice a month it is now
twice every Sabbath.
" 9th. Weekly contributions.
" 10th. Great improvement in behaviour and con-
gregational singing.
" 11th. Great improvement in the church building
and grounds.
" 12th. The orphanage, projected.
" 13th. Five praying elders where there were none.
" 14th. Over a thousand sermons preached.
" Besides this :
1. Our Monthly.
2. The Library Society.
3. The Clinton High School.
" I do not set this down in the way of boasting, but
to encourage myself to future duties. I feel sometimes
very much discouraged, but I still will push on. God
has enabled me to do this much to show that there is
work even for the weak, feeble churches and that
country pastors, whom He has called to obscure posi-
tions, and who should therefore stay there, may cause
their light to shine. Is it not my duty to remain here
despite all hindrances and discouragements, so as to
prove to the world this very thing ?
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 111
" Of late I have become negligent of my duty, but in
closing up this book and in beginning another, I trust
that I may begin a life of more energy and self-sacrifice,
that the week may find me at work and each new week
find the work pushed on.
" I trust that the mottoes at the beginning of this
book have not been mere breath, that I have pushed
on and worked for God.
" As I began, so I end — * Dirige vias meas, Domine
Jesu.' "
XI
IN MY NAME
And though her faith in snow be bound.
Her feet with frost be shod,
The crocus rises from the ground
And leaves the rest to God.
THE joy of consummation is in direct propor-
tion to the fear and toil and danger that
went before.
He who has never trembled, utterly afraid, has never
known the meaning of security. The only true faith
is resolved doubt. Rest follows toil and toil only.
So it comes to pass that all great spiritual experi-
ences ara of mingled emotions. He who is on the way
to the holy city of attainment passes through many
valleys, shadowed dark as death.
It has passed into a proverb that to journey hope-
fully is better than to arrive, but hope is not the only
beautiful companion of the successful traveller. Pain
goes with him, that watchful reminder of ill, and faith,
on whom so many bystanders look astonished. Regret
comes, too, with her gentle wisdom, wrought out in an
abandon of tears, and surprise leaps suddenly forth
from some dark crevice with a light in her hand.
These are the messengers of God, who will not show
Himself because He is so plainly visible to any one who
has eyes to see.
Yet he abides not in the companion more than in the
goal. He is not the orphanage nor the fear that the
orphanage will not be built (though he is both), so
112
IN MY NAME 113
much as he is the way. He is not the scenery of thf
play nor the language of its writing. He is the plot.
And therein lies the marvel of that wondrous thing
we call Providence, which includes sorrow and its many
surceases, joys flowing from hard won success, the
great Sea of Loss and the tears that have filled it, and
indeed all life with its infinite complexity of struggles,
and among them prayer and its answer.
And all these are part of the plot, which must have
darkness in it if it is to be full of light, which inevitably
summons cold that the hearth may glow ruddily and
heaps anxiety on difficulty for the sake of dispensing
happiness — and developing souls— for that is the plot.
When we read, therefore, the story of this soul in
its wonderful conflict for God, we hear that Voice
which no man heareth oft nor oft aright. For the
man who knows the face of Providence has seen God.
Just a tiny village, forgotten of progress, with its
dead railroad and discouraged inhabitants ; no money,
no culture, no power, no hope, no other thing that men
seek for as a prize to be grasped after. Was there ever
a better spot to meet God than this wayside Bush of
the Wilderness ? Here in the chill of poverty and in-
difference a warm hearth would be instantly noted and
welcomed. Here in the darkness, if anywhere, a light
would have a meaning.
Thither the boy pastor had come with the torch of a
passionate search in his hand. He was looking for
God, who was Himself the Search ; as also the light
by which he was guided.
Now the one great and beautiful problem for man-
kind is to determine whether connection between man
and God is possible and if so what the terms and con-
114 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
ditions are of such communication. To discover this is
to discover everything, for it embraces all happiness
here and all hope hereafter.
And one day the young minister became conscious
of the Great Discovery — that the Power loves and
hears. Stranger than any Columbus returning from a
new world with his tale of the light on Guanahani;
more wonderful than the Phoenician sailors rounding
the Cape of Good Hope with the story of a sun that
rose behind them ; more wondrous than the wildest
fancies of a Marco Polo, from far-off Cathay, is the
evidence of this spiritual adventurer who believed and
toiled on that spiritual ocean of which it may be truly
said that —
" While timid sailors reef and tack
And hug the sheltering lea,
The ships that bring a wide world back
Put bravely out to sea."
For there is a sea upon whose waves no men may
walk save only the blind. There this strange sweet
law holds, that every spirit must walk by faith and not
by sight ; by courage and not by strength. They who
sail the sea in boats view this spirit, walking at will
upon the waves, nor do any storms affright nor bil-
lowy waves engulf. The Power that guides many have
named but none have understood. By some it is called
Courage, Yision, Faith, but these are only the robes it
wears. It is really God, as all those know whom He
has led.
For into the life of the crossroads town, with the
dreary desolation of its poverty and the wastes of its
uninteresting monotony there came one who could see.
IN MY NAME 115
For that is a characteristic of him who walks by faith
which is courage, love shot through with patience.
Instantly life was no longer monotonous or poverty so
uninteresting as to be ridiculous. The life of the vil-
lage passed before eyes that understood and loved.
Possibilities appeared. Hope smiled here and there
among the people. From hearth to hearth a new
word w^as passed and a new joy from heart to heart.
A battle began in which those who took part on his
side gloried and even the fearful looked on with
amazement, for one had come to them who had loosed
the sandals from his feet, realizing that the very dirt
upon which he trod was holy. Little by little he won
his way into their hearts, having unlocked their doors
with the Golden Key of Faith ; a trust reposed in them
as well as in God. He did well to believe. Neither
betrayed him.
So as we move with him here and there among his
people, among the little children he loved so well that
he never forgot to enter each kiss they gave him in his
diary; among the cottages so humble and so few;
among the difficulties and hardships of the poorest little
parish he could hope for, it is as if we were studying a
lesson of Jehovah's setting. It was the beautiful prob-
lem of a human destiny not only, but also an example
the Teacher was giving whereby He might illustrate
His dealing with man. Again— as Lief Ericsson had
done it, — a continent was to be discovered, a light was
to appear to a way-worn traveller again and— as in the
past, so in the future, the waves of life's ocean were to
dance joyfully in the hope of it.
For this little minister reached out his hand in the
darkness and God took hold of it.
116 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" God sent us fifteen dollars for the orphanage by
last night's mail," he acknowledges. " Oh, how good
He is thus to continually remember us. Oh, my Father,
please send us something before the month ends —
enough at least to run our account over the one hun-
dred dollars that we desire to get every month." This
was in June, 1873.
" I prayed to Him," he wrote later in July, " that as
we only had $98.95 to report for June, please to send
us $1.05 to make it up to a hundred, as we never wish
to report less than $100. Saturday's mail brought us
nothing, so we were sorely disappointed, but see God's
goodness : Yesterday I w^ent down to get the book to
prepare the receipts for acknowledgment, when to my
joy I found that Mr. Phinney had entered ,$85, and
that Mr. Bell had received by last night's mail $46,
thus running up our receipts for June to $230, thus
making a larger acknowledgment than ever before.
I will distrust the Lord no longer. We have not a
cent dowm for July, but our receipts will overrun $100,
for I am going to pray for that amount. I am going
to pray more earnestly for the salvation of souls and
He will grant me them also. I know it. I believe it.
I am sure of it.
" Yesterday I drew from the bank all of our funds,
with the intention of paying for the land on Monday.
I prayed God to bring this business to a satisfactory
termination. I prayed to God our receipts for July
might overrun a hundred dollars. Up to last night the
amount was $105.85. This is a full and complete answer
to my prayer. Shall I ever doubt my God again !
" Right here I want to set down my gratitude to
God for His goodness in sending us $50 from one
IN MY NAME lit
source. At the beginning of the month I had prayed
earnestly for $100. We ran up easily to $50 and then
came a dead halt for three weeks. I was greatly dis-
couraged and ready to faint. I had put much stress
upon my prayer and it seemed ready to fail. I went
down to make up the entries for the month and by the
very last mail and at the very last moment came this
$60, and so the hundred and over v/as in hand. This
is God's doings and it is marvellous in my eyes. Oh,
my Father, I pray Thee greatly increase my faith that I
may plead for much. I have asked for $200 during
March.
" On page 129 of this journal is recorded my prayer
for $200 for the orphanage during March and to-day,
March 30th, the treasurer entered the two hundredth
dollar upon his books. Lord, I do feel grateful for Thy
answer to my prayer, and now this day because I feel
it needful to the success of our cause, I plead for $300
during the month of April. My blessed Lord, I am
unworthy, but oh, give it to us. And this shall satisfy
my heart that we are right in endeavouring to build a
house forty by sixty." — March, 1874.
To our mind there comes the memory of that first
dollar he wanted to receive, saying that if it came he
would count it an omen of God's purpose for him to
go forward — the dollar he did not receive but only half
of it and that from a little orphan boy. There is a
harmony here that is beautiful and a problem utterly
fascinating. Let us address ourselves to it, this strange
and wonderful problem of communication between God
and man.
There was once a man who spent part of his time in
his summer home in the mountains of North Georgia.
118 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Being a gentleman of culture and industry he was dis-
tressed by the lack of application on the part of many
of the families who lived in this beautiful country of
purpled peaks and fertile valleys. One day he asked a
long-time resident of that community to find him a man
to whom he would gladly lend, on the most favourable
terms, the money necessary to buy a beautiful little
farm, build an attractive home, get seeds and imple-
ments and thus provide all the necessaries of life for
his family. He only required of him that he should be
a man of intelligence, good character and industrious.
After four years' search the friend reported that he
could find many men of intelligence and good character
but a man of patient industry also he could not find.
For one of the rarest things in the world is the com-
bination. Of good sense there is plenty, and good char-
acter, but of these combined with unflagging toil there
is a great dearth.
So hath God found it as He searches among men.
For if we then being evil know how to give good
gifts unto our children, how much more shall our
Father which is in Heaven know how to give good gifts
to them that ask Him ?
Kow if the administration of the universe demands
anything it demands care in the detail of prayer an-
swering, for in answer to prayer may be read the char-
acter of God not only, but the character of those who
are blessed. Only those prayers should be answered
that teach something of the ideal that we should set
for others and that we should worship in Jehovah.
For God to answer a cry merely because it is strident
and long continued would be for Him to set a premium
oftentimes upon sloth and timidity. It would seem,
IN MY NAME 119
therefore, that answers to prayer should be seals of ap-
proval designed to aid and abet the development of
certain desirable types of character on earth. They
are in effect parables pointing out the way of life.
Prayers, like planets, have their laws and their pur-
poses.
So it comes to pass that all men and all institutions
who are to be blessed by God must pass a character ex-
amination that is searching and exhaustive. Their
faith must be measured, their courage must be proven,
their patience must be tested. It must be found out
whether they are grateful for little things and capable
of using them before they are trusted with great
things. They must be tried, tempted and taught until
they are friends of wisdom and walk hand in hand with
faith. They must pray for their first dollar looking
for the hand of God in the giving of it, and receive
their fifty cents instead, thus learning that the other
half must be toiled for. For it is not in the amount
but in the principle that God dwells. Oftentimes the
greatest day is the day of small things.
We set side by side with these considerations the
beautiful relationship that exists between the answer
and its prayer, which is the urge of God. For He sets
His Great Desire in the heart of man until it burns
with an all-consuming fire and becomes a craving so
intense as to command the obedience of the whole life
and to dictate the policies of thought, and sentiment,
and deed.
"Your wants are the lashes he uses
To drive every player to action,
He leads you by what you desire
And draws you by that which you crave for.^'
120 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
And then, in His own good time, having created the
prayer He adds thereto its answer. Each has a pur-
pose, which is the same purpose. With action and re-
action they touch the spirit from which they sprang and
to which they return that it may glorify God and enjoy
Him forever, and this indeed is the chief end of man.
This is the lesson we learn as we watch the life of
young William P. Jacobs as he goes from town to town
begging for his orphans, laying the foundations for
what he already called " the great work of my life."
Scarcely has he started before he hears that the dis-
tinguished Dr. B is trying to throw cold water on
the orphanage but comforts himself with the hope that
God is on his side, which " is a great deal better than
Dr. B ." Already in April '63 the orphanage
funds have reached the glorious sum of $650. In
July the Williams tract was purchased at $1,575, twelve
hundred cash being paid on it with $375 borrowed.
He used often to tell the story later of how the seller
insisted on the deal being closed on a certain day ; of
how he rode nine miles to the neighbouring Laurens to
draw his money from the bank and shortly afterwards
the bank closed its doors. So did he think the Lord
protected his little orphanage. Two weeks before they
had resolved to build a house 40 x 60 and had chosen
Mr. R. S. Phinney, the beloved bee-keeper, business
man and beggar for all good causes as superintendent
of the construction work, an arrangement that was
soon changed by awarding the contract for it to
Mr. W. B. Bell. On January 6, '74, the site was staked
off and a pair of oxen purchased to do the hauling.
Then he exclaimed happily, " The great job is begun.
Kit Young hauled the first load of rock ! " Four days
c
05
IN MY NAME 121
later Stobo Simpson accepted the principalship of the
high school, and shortly afterwards a batch of forty-
one immigrants arrived at Clinton from whom a
teamster and a mason were engaged to work on the
orphanage. By late February Tim had hauled 125 great
foundation rock but he thought, " Our oxen are so
shabby that we will have to part with them." When
the neighbours found their farms too wet for plough-
ing they turned a hand to help. By April the first a
little shelter had been raised on the grounds for the
workmen and he himself was the first to take refuge
under it from a shower of rain. On the fifth the mason
began work on the construction under a little blackjack
tree near by. The following day ground was broken.
And on May 28th, the Great Day, the corner-stone
was laid. It was the tenth anniversary of his ordina-
tion as pastor of the Clinton Church. They gave a
public dinner on the grounds, collecting $325.60 at an
expense of less than $75. See his joy over it.
" At last the corner-stone of the orphanage was laid.
To-day, the 28th of May, saw a great day in our town.
At an early time the town was filled with carriages,
buggies and people. The good Templars were out in
force. The Masonic fraternity, presided over by
Colonel Ball, numbered over a hundred. The cere-
monies occupied but a short time. Then the stone was
put in place. Among other things it contained my
photograph. Then came the dinner. It was much
more successful than I had anticipated. The proceeds
(gross) will amount to at least $300 — about $30 more
received from kind friends on the grounds.
^' One thing only makes me sad and that is that this
good cause had opponents and enemies that did all they
122 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
could, but how ineffectually, to injure our good name
and our receipts. And members of my own church,
one or two only, but among these some that I loved,
were of this opposition. I feel sorry that one of my
friends was in it, but on the other hand how many
showed true colours to-day. God bless and reward
them." He was saddened by the opposition to his
work, yet as we read the story of it we are comforted
by the thought — toiling at our own tasks.
Although busy with his orphan work he did not for-
get the high school. It also was having many diffi-
culties, among others a rival school and much opposition
and indifference. He thought long over its hardships,
taking its obstacles as opportunities.
" I have at last set my heart on a plan," he resolved,
"the complete fulfillment of which I desire to com-
memorate my twentieth anniversary at Clinton. It is
nothing more nor less than the establishment of a male
college at Clinton. The thing can be done, and
although I state it in this cool way, as though it were
a mere bagatelle, yet when Clinton College is a fixed
fact, as it will be in ten years from now if God spares
me and prospers me, this cool way of speaking will be
justified. It will take a vast outlay of time and money
but it can be done and, God willing, it shall be done.
For the present I can only digest plans, for all my
efforts at money raising must go to the orphanage.
JS'or do I expect to do much towards even broaching
the subject of the college until the orphanage is built."
The same month of June '74 he wrote :
" I have hereby resolved to establish a college in the
town of Clinton, as well as other institutions. I do it
for the glory of God and to show that a poor country
IN MY NAME 123
pastor, living in the least of villages, can do, if he will,
great things for God. For this cause I remain in
Clinton and to this end will I labour, so help me God,
and keep me steadfast to this purpose."
Through the whole long summer and fall he toiled
incessantly. Little gifts came in one by one and his
visits to the churches added regularly to them. One
day he received a whole railroad bond valued at $500
and he exultantly set it aside to begin his endowment
fund. The close of the year found him busy in his
pastorate, praying for church, high school, orphanage,
— and a railroad.
Then came 1875 and before the first month has half
gone he has written happily, " Work on the railroad
has begun ! " and " Mr. Lowry has accepted the princi-
palship of the high school." He notes ruefully that
*' Just $600 has been paid on my last year's salary,"
and sadly that he has received the sorrowful news of
the death of his brother Ferdie, whom he has not seen
since he was thirteen years old. Shortly afterwards
his young printer, Willie Kook, left him to set, print,
mail and edit Our Monthly by himself. In the same
month he began preaching at Bethany to supplement
the $600, and his father moved to Cokesbury to take
charge of a school at that point. Also that same
month of February saw the last stone laid in the walls
of the " Home of Peace."
The roof was soon lifted and painting began in late
April. He had more time nov/, for Ike Bourne had
taken Willie Rook's place in the printing office. He
even took a trip to Washington, seeing his father's
people there and in Alexandria just opposite. Of his
own little town he could only remark, " We show vis-
124 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
itors the orphanage, our cemetery and church, the
steam mills, the high school and Mr. Phinney's bees."
By July they were endeavouring to secure a matron.
Mrs. Thornwell was the first chosen, and then Mrs.
McBride and then Mrs. Philson, all of whom declined.
Having failed in every effort to secure another, the
little lady of Coldwater offered herself and they gave
up their home to live with their orphans.
On October 1, 1875, the dream came true. Oh, what
a wonderful realization of how fond a hope ! He found
himself in his orphanage. On July 11, 1873, he had
written, ** This morning at seven o'clock God put into
my care another son. Oh, may I be faithful as a parent."
Now his little family of four had grown into fourteen,
for ten little orphan children had been given him to care
for. He names them over lovingly : Mattie Clark, Flora
Pitts, Ella Entriken, Fannie and Annie Agnew, girls,
with Walter Entriken, Jinimie and Dannie Boozer,
Alfred and Johnnie Agnew, boys. And to their names
he adds the prayer that God would take care of them.
" The orphanage is opened," he writes. " My study
is beautifully arranged. Mary's sewing-room is near
by. The house is pretty well furnished. Ten little
orphan children are here. Several more have applied.
A little money is needed for little things — a great deal
for great things. As to the day of opening, my mind
is all in a whirl about that, for I was very unwell. We
had several hundred present, a good and successful
dinner, an afternoon exercise, a dramatic exhibition at
night. Sabbath, father preached a splendid morning
sermon for me, and Brother James H. Thornwell a
good night sermon. We had good audiences, a pleas-
ant communion, a fine Sabbath school."
IN MY NAME 125
And in this great hour he laid his plans.
" I propose this, if the Lord will : First, to take twelve
children — no more ; second, to pay our debts ; third, to
make an effort to raise $26,000 endowment; fourth,
after $10,000 is raised to take one child for each
$1,000 contributed till we reach twenty-five children.
After that I have no further plans."
Soon the joy of the first triumph gave way to that
strange sense of responsibility which follows hard on
the heels of glory, and a host of gloomy diflaculties
wherewith God labours to make men great.
" I am sadly discouraged," he confesses. " Lord, give
me strength. One of my friends told me the other
day that I am the hardest to discourage of anybody
he knew. Alas, I am always discouraged. But I talk
and act the other way. That is the only way to do
anything. I am very weak, but it would not do to let
others find it out."
And so it came to pass that in the ordinary course,
not in romance; in opposition, not in praise; in toil,
not in glory, this thing was begun which was to bring
so much of romance, and praise, and glory. The quali-
ties which worked their will under the hand of God
are those qualities He invariably chooses to bless.
Again in this forgotten village, as innumerably in the
ages past and future. He would set His example forth
that all men might learn how inevitably he that asketh
receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that
knocketh it shall be opened. In the spirit of all that
makes man great he had made his prayer to Jehovah,
who hath so ordered His universe that answers follow
such prayers. And what is this spirit but the " Name "
of Jesus ?
XII
THE WORKING MODEL
How often, Lord, I cried to Thee for aid,
Who, knowingly, didst linger on Thy way,
Yet ever would Thy sun prolong his day.
Thy moon o'er shadowed Ajalon be stayed.
SOMEWHEKE about the home or office of the
dreamer that we name Inventor is the pro-
totype of the thing he saw. It is called the
Working Model. It is an illustration. Its value con-
sists in its being an example, of an improved type
of engine perhaps. It will not labour or toil ; others
greater and more powerful will follow to do that. It
is of no importance as a worker, yet it is of more im-
portance than all its children that shall come after it,
for it first answered the great question — How ?
Of a similar sort are all the truly great and it is
essential that their experiences and the qualities of soul
therefrom drawn shall measure the fundamentals of
life. Fear must come into their hearts swiftly pursued
by joy. Danger must affright if only that safety may
follow. Anxiety and sorrow must be allowed to do
their precious work, and the agony of him who chooses
a beautiful ideal, a love for those who cannot under-
stand, must perform its blessed ministry. So that when
men look back on that life they may see there a
working model by which their own struggle may be
blessed if they also are willing to drink of the cup from
126
THE AVOllKING MODEL
127
which he drank. For the laws of God are very sure
and the name does not matter.
Clinton in 1876.
Therefore when, as 1876 began, the young pastor
exclaimed, " Oh, if our orphanage were only free of
128 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
debt and endowed, what splendid opportunities of use-
fulness I would have," he must have been thinking of
orphans in need of food, and clothing, and Jesus. But
he was not thinking — for how could he know — of the
working model by which other orphanages were to be
founded nor of how much finer it ever is to struggle
greatly than to rejoice in victory. Did his enemies
outnumber him ten to one ? So much greater by ten
the glory.
It was far more important that the orphanage should
be built as God was building it — m yearning, work,
fear, need, prayer answer, joy, — than that it should be
built at all.
Henry Drummond was almost right when he said
that " this world is a workshop, but it is not a place
where men make things but where things make men,"
if that marvellous interplay of soul and event and God
may be called " things."
Every institution that is to make character must
previously have its own character made. Those who
are fit to teach must first be fitly taught. And the
real teachers are not endowments, and ease, and praise,
— but want, and work, and woe. Of them only are
faith and strength and courage born, which, being
the object of institutions, are far more important than
they.
For his little orphans' home was still in danger, as
he thought, though actually neither more nor less safe
than thereafter. " If we can run things till Christmas
we shall be tolerably safe," be had written, as they
opened under " this heavy debt of a thousand dollars !
Oh, my precious helper, come to me and lift this burden
and it shall be my last debt ! " That was in January.
THE WORKING MODEL 129
It was the same in February : " Oh, the debt, this is a
great matter to me. Thou canst lift this burden with
a touch ; my own precious Master, help me." And in
June : " In one stroke, Lord, Thou canst do more than
I in a lifetime," and for many months thereafter till
one happy November (1878) he could exclaim for his
personal affairs, " For the first time in fifteen years I am
out of debt," and for the orphanage (December, 1878) :
'' The orphanage has paid off its last dollar of indebt-
edness ; no man has any paper against us, thank God ! "
By that time he had learned its lesson of wisdom and
when it was of no more value — it was paid.
It is during this period of his life that he worked out
his own theory of prayer. It was like all real knowl-
edge founded on induction. His view of prayer was
pragmatic. Time and time again he was astonished by
a curious fact. Things he worked for and prayed for
came to pass. If he worked, prayer worked. For ex-
ample early in January, 1876 :
" Mr. T. C. Scott came in last night loaded down
with provisions for the orphanage, as the result of his
begging expedition. This success on his part is in
direct answer to prayer, I do believe. I prayed the
Lord to assist me in getting a faithful assistant — I also
prayed Him to make the contributions with a special
reference to the provision department, and telling Him
that I would look upon this as a direct proof of His in.
terposition to answer prayer. It looks as if God in-
tended to answer prayer for my help." — January, 1876.
" God showed us a token of His goodness last night.
There was no meat in the house for breakfast. I said
— ' There is a box of clothing at the depot, it may con-
tain a little meat. Let us try it first.' I had just re-
130 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
ceived $2.75 for subscriptions for Our Monthly ten
minutes before, all the money there was in the house.
With this I paid the freight on the box, which was even
$2.75, and on opening the box took out two hams ! I
had just prayed for help. Thank God ! " — June, 1876.
" To God's glory I set it down. We owed Miss
Emma W. a balance on her salary. I knew not where
to go to get it. I had not one cent and yet little by
little it came in, the last cent coming in just in time to
foot the bill exactly and not one cent more or less.
And this is direct answer to prayer. Oh, my holy
Saviour, give me courage. Help me to work, help me
to pray."— August, 1876.
And so he passed by induction from fact to theory :
" I have been reading very carefully Muller's ' Life of
Trust.' It is a good and valuable book. But I think
he pushed his theory too far. I do not believe that the
Lord's mind is that everybody should trust solely to
Him. Why has He given us faculties if we are not to use
them in our work ? The Lord has blessed those efforts
that have been the result of prayer. He has blessed
our prayerful labours. Thus He has taught us that
praying and working go together. MuUer's experi-
ence shows that the Lord can work without means.
Mine will be to show that the Lord always blesses
work and prayer if combined and proceeding on Scrip-
tural principles. These principles, as far as I am able
to decide them, are : First, untiring activity. This is
not beyond but up to our ability ; Second, fervent
prayer, — this is not formal or at stated times, but con-
stant ; Third, scrupulous honesty, not such an honesty
that makes a fair balance sheet but that kind which at-
tempts to do for the cause far more than the cause does
THE WORKING MODEL 131
for its promoter ; Fourth, self-sacrifice ; Fifth, humil-
ity. This is as hard as any part of it. Men love
praise. It is very hard to consent to hide ourselves be-
hind others ; Sixth, close and devout attention to the
work. I think the church and orphanage both often
suffer because I neglect them.
" These are, as far as my experience has yet gone,
the Scriptural principles on which the Lord's work
ought to proceed. I am grateful to record, however,
that there is a constant growth in my experience, and
that it seems to me the Lord by His providence is con-
stantly showing me the plain path to tread."
And in December, 18Y7 :
" God wonderfully provides for us when we actually
need it. We needed a pump but could spare very little
money. Blatchley & Co. knocked off two- thirds the
price. We needed badly a sewing-machine and Mrs.
Blackwood of Greenville is going to send us one. We
need a well very much. We need a cow. Lord, Thou
knowest we need these things. Give them to us, if it
be Thy will."
" Look back to December 22d and read the prayer
there recorded. In answer God gives us a better well
than we then hoped for and two cows."
And in May, 1878 :
"We have come to the verge of need and there is
nothing coming in. Lord send us this day our daily
bread. I have written six letters asking aid but the
dear Lord can send it before any human help can
avail. . . .
" Oh, I thank Thee, blessed Father, that to strengthen
my faith Thou hast done this very thing. Last night
the bill of goods came in and we had nothing in the
132 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
treasury but by the same mail came thirty dollars from
a most unexpected source, beiug more than the special
sum needed, and as I believe in answer to an earnest
prayer of mine yesterday, to this effect — ' Lord, I have
no reason to hope for a cent by this mail, as our sup-
plies have been very few of late. I have written letters
that will, by Thy aid, I trust, bring relief in a few
days, but Thou canst gloriously strengthen my faith by
sending in a supply for this evening's need before my
letters could possibly be answered.' And He did it."
In the meantime his life went along its accustomed
way of dream and deed, of plan and pursuance. He
was so often disappointed that he despaired no more.
His Library Society prospered — and was gone, and
came to life again. Indeed, by June of '76 he had
established three libraries in Clinton, the Library
Society's of 150 volumes, the orphanage's of 200
volumes, and that of the Sunday School of 1,100
volumes, and he could say :
^' I found no books here when I came and now this
is getting to be a reading people," and characteristically
he adds — "I am determined to go to work for the
establishment in this town of a library. It must be, it
shall be. I am determined to have a really first-class
library, with a good brick building and reading rooms,
librarian, etc. So help me God and keep me steadfast
and ever in my senses, to keep and observe the same."
It is in this same year, 1876, that he thinks the high
school " has entered proudly upon its fourth year,"
with fifty students. For Mr. W. S. Lee had taken
charge — " A considerable acquisition, as Clinton people
will soon see." He was constantly thinking of greater
things for this high school.
THE WORKING MODEL 133
" On my hands constantly — A church of 100 mem-
bers, a Sunday School of 250, a prayer-meeting, Our
Monthly printing office, this orphanage, and there is
more still, but here are the grand things I will do —
The Clinton Public Library, The Clinton College !
" I propose the following plan for the establishment
of our college — that the orphanage, as soon as it escapes
this grinding debt, call on the citizens to unite with us,
that we furnish the lands and hold the titles and that
we erect, with the aid of the town, a building to which
our advanced pupils shall be admitted. But thousands
of dollars must first be got to put the orphanage on a
thoroughly substantial basis. I think a thousand
dollars to free us from debt, one thousand, two hun-
dred to run us a year and our invested fund of one
thousand, five hundred is enough for our present es-
tablishment, but we do need one thousand for com-
pletion of our building and fencing. * Unless the
Lord build the house they labour in vain that build
it.' "
And in his church work he toiled incessantly,
although his salary was so irregularly paid that he
could often say, "Four hundred and forty dollars
collected on salary this year and none promised for
next." He directed his attentions towards getting his
people to give to others, determining "that if they
would not give to my support they should to every-
thing else." Yet he loved his flock as a tender shep-
herd. Like a faded flower pressed between the pages
of an old book are these words from his diary (July,
1876):
" My darling little Minnie West is dead. Oh, God,
what can I say, I loved her so. Dear Saviour, take
134 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
good care of her and let me see her again some day.
Precious, darling Minnie, how can I give you up !
"Tears come whenever I think of Minnie. I did
love the little child so. Dear little thing ! How
sweetly she used to tell me she loved me. Oh, Minnie !
Minnie ! how can I give you up ? God pity and help
her poor parents.
" I must write through this page, for when I turn to
it and see Minnie's name on it, it blinds me. Oh, God,
how I did love that child ! Had she been my own I
could have loved her no better. Sweet blessed h'ttle
one, the sunset land seems nearer now that you are
there."
For the rest, his life went on its usual routine, one
unceasing succession of needs, fears, prayers and an-
swers. The Laurens railroad at last reached the center
of town (December, 1875) and gave a free excursion to
Newberry, and about one hundred and fifty delighted
villagers improved the opportunity to see if it would
really run. The fii'st Christmas passed at the orphanage
with no presents for the children except such as he
gave them. Miss Emma "Witherspoon, granddaughter
of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, came
to be the first teacher at the orphanage until August '76,
when Miss Pattie Thorn well, daughter of the great and
good man for whom the institution was named, suc-
ceeded her. In September he went to see the Centen-
nial in Philadelphia, thinking he would write it up for
Our Monthly^ but declared he found it too big, and in
the same month first mentions his deafness as a hin-
drance to his work.
In 1877, which came in with a notable snow-storm,
he finished the attic of the orphanage, dividing it into
THE WORKING MODEL 135
printing office and study, but he still needs " a piazza
and kitchen and a helper for Mary." In the night of
February 15th, at ten o'clock, " God gave me a fifth
child, a little lad that I pray may grow up to be a
good and useful boy and a model man. We will name
him Thornwell, in that he is the first and only child
born in the Thornwell Orphanage," and on Decem-
ber 1st he notes that "Father preached for me and
baptized our little Thornwell " before a good congre-
gation. For his father had come back to South Caro-
lina, so that at the recent meeting of Presbytery at
Anderson the rare spectacle was seen of a father and
his two sons elected as officers, all ministers: Eev.
Ferdinand Jacobs, D. D., Moderator ; Rev. J. R. Jacobs,
Temporary Clerk, and Rev. W. P. Jacobs, Stated Clerk,
The year 1878 came bringing two little boys to the
orphanage, " Darby and Sam Fulton. I hope they will
prove to be good little boys." Soon Mr. Scott, that
blessed beggar, came in from one of his rounds bring-
ing a cow with him. The kitchen is finished, and now
for the piazza ! On this last his heart is set and by
June he has almost enough money for it. In August
it is being built and a laundry is being planned as the
next improvement. If God gave them to him because
he prayed, saying, " I want it before the last of sum-
mer but I will wait on it for years," was it less won-
derful than the bonds that would some day follow, or
less beautiful to Him who understands ? Indeed when
the piazza a.nd laundry have been built and he is
dreaming and talking of a cotton factory for his town
twenty years before it is a fact, he exclaims, " Blessed
Master, what does it all amount to if souls are not
saved ? "
136 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
For it was on the church that had paid him $440 for
one year's toil and promised nothing for the next that
his great love centered.
" Blessed work to-day," he writes, " for which I thank
the Lord. Six united with the church, among them
my own child, Florence. Lord, make her truly Thine.
Four of our orphans also joined, and Henry Yance.
Thank God ! To me a pleasant day. My soul was in
it. Dear Lord, give me more. This is but a taste —
Lord, send me souls."
And so he came to 1879, the year of his unmeas-
ured sorrow. Already there were thirty in his orphan
family entrusted to him by sweet providences for which
he had prayed. It is on the last day of the year and
he is writing to God :
" Two more hours and the year ends. Its 365 days
have been cut off of my life. I am a 3'^ear nearer eter-
nity. To-night I feel that the love of Christ is a pre-
cious and glorious gift to me. I love Thee, oh, my
Master. I wonder that Thou couldst accept such a poor
gift as my wild heart, so often false to Thee and to
itself, but this I know, the Lord died for me. It is a
glorious thought. I know not how soon He may call
me to leave everything behind, but this I know, that if
He will only make sure to bestow on me eternal life
and to see His blessed person, I would not hesitate to
say with Paul, ^To depart and be with Christ is far
better.' It is only when I am drawn by a fear lest I
shall not have everlasting life, that death seems ter-
rible. If I could but lay hold with irresistible faith on
that glorious proposition that Christ hath brought
immortality to light I would be content and would
glorify God with thanksgiving. It is more than faith
THE WORKING MODEL 137
I want. I crave to know. I am not satisfied with say-
ing, ' I believe,' * I am persuaded.' I want to say, ' I
know' — to say it most intensely and profoundly — I
know. Oh, my God, grant me this knowledge.
" And now, blessed Lord, I close the year and this
book together. All its secrets that are unrecorded here.
Thou knowest. It is my pain and my joy that Thou
knowest. Blot out, O Lord, the errors and the short-
comings, and grant large success to all good labours.
Oh, blessed Father, crown my life's work with success.
This year crushes me with its failures. Oh, lift me
up, Lord, lift my life higher, higher. I would be
wholly consecrated to Thee, that I might show to this
people a life hid with Christ in God. Lord, I leave it
all, all with Thee. Where another twelve months will
find me, I know not, but oh, let no times, no seasons,
separate me from Thy cause. Grant to me to love
Thee better, to work harder for Thee every year, and
when my work for Thee in this life is done, as it is now
done in this year, oh, give to me proof of my longing
hope that I shall live forever and with Thee! No
better thing than this can I conceive or crave. My soul
cries out for it. I long, I pant, I thirst after it, yea
more than hart for water brook."
XIII
THE EOD OF HEEMES
Nor Time, that ever is, nor Space may rob
The wondrous hoardings of thy treasury.
Turn low the light, my heart — 'tis She — now throb
In Memory,
THERE is an ancient story, told often to those
in trouble, of a way whereby and a source
wherefrom all bitter waters might be sweet-
ened and all dross transmuted into gold. It has to do
with the same marvellous process sketched in the old
time riddle of Samson : " Out of the eater came forth
meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness."
Passing along this strange path sorrow becomes joy,
weakness grows into strength and courage springs from
fear, as the traveller wins
''God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain,
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain."
For as is the soul so also becomes that which it
touches. Strife comes and from it strength is drawn
or weakness; danger comes, and from it courage or
fear ; difficulty comes, and from it achievement or fail-
ure. This clear and beautiful quality of spirit, touching
anything, is able to transmute it into good. " This is
the Rod of Hermes," said the ancient philosopher;
" touch what you will with it and it becomes gold."
Nor was this power of soul very far removed from
138
THE ROD OF HERMES 139
that conviction that all things work together for good
to those that love God. " Concerning the Gods," said
Epictetuis, " some say that the Godhead does not exist
at all and others that though He exists He does not
bestir Himself nor take forethought concerning things.
A third part hold that He does take forethought but
only for great and heavenly matters, and not for matters
oil earth. Others still maintain that He does bestir
Himself for matters on earth but only for great and
heavy concerns of transcendent importance. A fifth
part, of whom were Socrates and Ulysses, cry : ' I
move not without thy knowledge.' "
And it was well for this man who neared the
shadows that he held such a magic wand so securely
and knew its use so well. For the author had now
come to his dark chapter.
There is a dark chapter in every life-story always
exquisitely planned and placed as only the true artist
can place it. Perfectly timed also it is to match the
forward movement of the plot and the deeper its dark-
ness the deeper its meaning. As the reader of the story
looks back on it in later years he knows it to have
been the great chapter from which every later victory
drew its authority and without which each after-glory
was empty of meaning. And when those come who
study lives, endeavouring to find in them the sesame of
that wisdom whereby the door to the great secret may
be opened, they also look for that hour of a night so
black that it may be felt and measure the soul of their
hero by the spirit the Author gave him as he fought his
way forward into the light.
One can picture the scene in the little village as the
sun set. A new year is opening and the pastor, still
140 THE LIFE OF AVILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
young, is planning high things for his church, though
his last year's salary of $G00 has not been paid; for his
high school, with its romantic halo of a male college
forming about its head, and for his orphans' home of
which one lone building has been erected. He is going
to study regularly and write a weekly sermon, and
visit more often, and revive the library society, and
extend the orphan work, and improve Our Monthly
and complete the new Sunday School room. All these
things he will do but the greatest he knows not.
And now we take his hand in ours and walk with
him down that lonely path so rich in its wayside
flowers of wisdom. This somber company whom he
meets, Pain, Loss, Despair, Loneliness, Agony, and the
sweet bands that Love had bound about his life. The
great black hour has come ! He sits down to write
with a bursting, breaking heart. *' Oh, my God, help
me. Mary, darling Mary, my own sweet, precious
wife, how can I bear this separation ? Gone ! so quick,
so unexpected. I shall Well, heart, beat on, but
every beat is a sledge-hammer striking pain. She died
at 11 : 35 to-day ; her last look was into my eyes and
then her precious soul went out in glory. I know she
is with my Saviour. She loved Him so. He would
not forsake her in this hour. No ! No ! No ! but oh,
my Lord, what shall I do ? Help me, oh, my God !
I'm falling, falling, falling. Half the world is gone
out to me. Wherever I look some token of my Mary's
love strikes me. Oh, my God, forsake me not in this
hour. The evil that I greatly feared is come upon me."
" It was love that cut short the expiring breath from
her dear lips, — at the recognition of our tears about her
bed. Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, how can I give
THE KOD OF HERMES 141
thee up ? Oh, my life, my love. I had thee fourteen
years, and yet I would give everything for one short
hour's converse with thee. Pity me, pity me, oh, my
friends. Help me, oh, my God. She lies now in our
reception room, so sweet and still in death. She will
never speak to me any more."
" Four days have passed since she was buried — they
have contained the bitterest experiences of my life.
But to-day I feel that the agony of death is past. I
have suffered that which none but God will know."
Thus there came a cloud that overshadowed him and
he feared as he entered into the cloud.
But there came a voice out of the cloud :
" I walked down over the farm to-day but I could
not think in any way but this :
'* Oh, to be nearer, nearer,
Close to my Saviour's side.
Leaning my head on His bosom
Awaiting the ebb of the tide.
" I have never felt such a still and quiet rest on the
Master before in all my life. I feel that what I have
suffered, as it has brought to Mary eternal happiness,
has wrought in me more faith and a deeper trustfulness
in my dear Lord."
" The Board met last night and elected Miss Sallie
Lee matron. I sincerely hope that she may accept.
They passed some very kind and touching resolutions
about Mary."
"Sometimes a wave of sorrow comes over me,
striking me down to the earth, but I now have learned
to think of Mary, not as dead but as living. I shall see
her again in the presence of my Saviour and hers, and
142 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
in the better country. Until then, I will bide near
Thee, O Lord."
And so a week passed while he dwelt with sorrow
upon sorrow, with the wand in his hand.
"A week ago to-day ! I find my exterior perfectly
calm, but I have lost the zeal for the things of this
world, that once so filled me. I long to be more use-
ful in Christ's kingdom, to do more and better work
for Him."
" Sweet, dear, precious wife, mine no longer. What
would I not give for just a few short words from you.
Her very last words to me were in answer to my ques-
tion— * Mary, do you still put your trust in Jesus ? ' —
' Yes, yes,' she said. ^ He is all 1 have to trust in now.'
Oh, sweet, blessed wife, sainted and safe. God keep
thee. But my poor life, what shall I do ? "
" Yesterday I began my work for the Master, — alas,
that my zeal is born of sorrow. I find it my pleasure
now, for the first time since I became a pastor, to visit
my flock. Sometimes I have feared that God took my
Mary away from me because I loved her better than I
loved His Church. And, strange contradiction, in the
next minute I fear that He took her because I did not
sufficiently lighten her burdens. I pray God to sanctify
this great sorrow to my soul. I cannot realize any-
thing. I never could. Is Mary gone ? I look for her
sweet face to look in through the door. I think surely
she will come in soon. Every night I dream of L^r.
O God, help me."
" In my trouble, Florence, my precious little daugh-
ter, is a great comfort to me. She comes as near as a
daughter could to taking her mother's place. I love
her even as I love my own soul. , , , It is a sin, it
THE EOD OF HERMES
143
^^
^
►v^-a*.^
A*.^^ ^^f^Jo
^^9"%.-^ J>^
cA* ^-i^T^ o-^i/T*. ^-^-^ A»**^ ^ y^S^ o-»x^^
'^*-«e7
A page from his Diary, March 24, 1879. Compare this draw-
ing with the fulfillment of his prayer ; over forty buildings
occupied by nearly four hundred children and teachers.
144 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
is cowardice to long so to be in Heaven with Mary.
Oh, my God, give me strength."
Now when the Author had seen the vast sorrow in
which His hero mourned, He bethought Him of the
finest touch of all that the story might be perfect and
its tragedy add meaning to meaning. It was not
enough that he should suifer as other men, but now,
while his heart was sore and his soul in need of com-
fort, he must touch the hot u^on of jealousy and feel
the cold steel of enmity. So would his life ever speak
a word in season to him who might later be weary.
" The breezes have blown gently for the orphanage
for a long long time," he writes in that very month,
*' but now there comes a furious counterblast from
the charging us with all manner of deceit and
fraud. It would trouble me sadly if it were true.
Blessed Master, I lay this work at Thy feet. Destroy
me or this work, if so be Thy will. It is Thine, I am
Thine. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
" I am sometimes as full of sorrow as I can hold
when I think of my dear, precious, dead wife. Lord,
help me to bear this."
" The papers, especially in county, are after
me and the orphanage because we have tried to get the
people to contribute to its support. I am very uncer-
tain as to the best course to pursue. I think I shall be
compelled to reply, and yet of all things in the world,
I most despise a newspaper controversy. The
accuses me of fraud, etc., the of incompetency.
I know not why the blessed Master has allowed this
avalanche to descend upon me just at this particular
time, when my heart is smarting under a heavy sorrow,
but I know that He can make even the wrath of man
THE EOD OF HEKMES 145
to praise Him. May He give me wisdom in this trying
hour that I may not err. I shall, to the best of my
ability, write out a short reply in as gentle a way as I
can for the paper. As to the , I know
not what to do, for their attack is so evidently malicious
and done behind my back, they not having sent me a
copy of their paper."
And here we come across a strange fact and a strange
law : All birth is in pain. Each new life, each new in-
stitution must win its way by struggle. It should not
be otherwise. They who would teach must be taught,
and this is the only school for character. What is
better in life than the struggle ? Who would wish to
win a race by walking ? So come these days of storm
to cause great oaken hearts to grow ; these hours of
fire that the spirit may be tempered as steel, these
precious moments of trial that glory may crown so fine
a spiritual victory. And so in these sad weeks the
Author gave him this to write about also that there
might be nothing lacking to test the power of the rod:
*' One of the greatest burdens I have to bear is the
reviling of the orphanage and its work by brother
ministers, I thank God that they speak falsely. His
favour is better far than that of men. . . ."
"I have just received an insulting communication
from Rev. , reiterating his charge that the or-
phanage is a humbug and a swindle. I am, of course,
greatly pained by it but God has so greatly blessed my
labours of late that it was needful that I should be
taken down a bit, lest I should glory above measure.
Just see what God has done for you during this past
twelve months :
" 1st. He has added thirty members to your church.
146 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" 2d. Among these your own son.
" 3d. He has supported the orphanage, putting
more funds in your hands than ever before for the care
of the children.
"4th. He has given you $1,000 for Faith Cottage,
and $500 additional for the endowment.
"5th. He has blessed and enlarged the Sabbath
School, crowning your efforts to give it a home with
great success.
" 6th. He is now prospering the plans for the build-
ing of your Mission Chapel.
" 7th. He has enabled you to buy a new press for
Out Monthly and has enlarged its sphere of usefulness.
" 8th. He has honoured you by your election to the
position of reporter to the General Assembly.
" And now perhaps He would add to your blessings
by giving you this thorn in your side ; for it is written
* Woe unto you, when all men speak well of you ! ' "
" Heavenly Father, help me to be patient under this
cursing of Shimei, and reckon it also to me for good."
And so she left him in the little village saying softly
to himself, " It seems a long, long time, Mary, that I
have to wait. There is a whole lifetime to come in
first " — as one who reads a good novel and, wondering
whether the dark chapter will ever end, counts the
many pages of the story yet remaining.
She would not see the after days of honour and
triumph, not even little Faith Cottage, whose corner
stone was so soon to be laid, nor would her human eyes
view any of that rapid industrial development which
would transform this crossroads village, without even a
bank, into a thriving little city with every modern con-
venience. To her God gave the ineffable glory of
THE ROD OF HERMES 147
labouring and suffering and dying in the dark chapter,
and of being loved forever for it.
For during all the years to come her spirit with his
would walk arm in arm through the remaining pages
of the book, whose every syllable she would light with
the living sacrifice she had made. He would reach out
his hands for her and, intangibly, he would feel her
pressure. Calling her name, she, inaudibly, would an-
swer. Countless times he would look for her and, in-
visibly, she would come. And when the long, long
time had been spent and the whole lifetime had come
in first, when the little pastor whose loves had made
him great had gone to her, leaving sorrow and black-
ness in his turn upon the hearts of many who sorrowed,
those who looked sadly through his secretest desk
would find her hand still touching his, her voice speak-
ing to him and her face smiling at him from a tiny
package of faded love-letters written to him in the
long, long ago. And one of them ended thus : " May
God bless and keep you, darling husband, until you get
home."
But he did not know that part of the plot as he
sadly took up his burden again. His was that ancient
darkness of eyes blinded by the sudden transition from
brilliancy to blackness. Only he felt that the wand
could transmute his dross into gold. And that w^hich
he would himself do he prayed also for others :
" My little Thornwell is two years old to-day," he
wrote on February 15, 18Y9. "Poor little fellow, had
it not been for him his mother would have been alive
to-day. May he make noble use of a life purchased
at such a price."
xiy
FOE THAT FUTUEE
Till this I learned, that he who buildeth well
Is greater than the structure that he rears,
And wiser he who learns that Heaven hears
Than all the wordy wisdom's letters spell.
THERE is nothing quite so delicious in life as to
watch God bring things to pass.
The blow has fallen — the disaster has come,
the struggle is long, and hard, and, oh, so wearisome !
The sources of aid have failed one by one, and one by
one the bright hopes have faded, when — so swiftly, as
quiet — a voice speaks out of the cloud.
There are no words wherewith to express that infi-
nite longing for help which this man felt that the beau-
tiful dream might come true. He was toiling and
suffering and praying when the vicious attacks came to
threaten all his hopes. The result of seven years of
toil seemed jeopardized by them, and as these base
charges circulated here and there in the papers and
pulpits and pews they seemed to be swearing his very
soul away with their false testimony. How could a
just God permit such a thing !
Then one day a man heard of them and his face
flushed with indignation that there should be found on
earth any so vile as to attack even a little unknown
minister, working for God and his orphans. It roused
in him that fine counterblast of soul that would bring
148
FOR THAT FUTURE 149
aid to the lover of children. So he told another of it,
a woman whom he knew to be good and generous, and
one happy day in June there came singing through the
mails a check for one thousand dollars for the little
folks at Thornwell who had so loyal a champion. It
was a new name and an unknown signature as of a
gift out of the vast Beyond, which indeed it was, from
Within the Shadow where stood one watching, caring
for His own. Thus was it proven once more that while
" the day is Thine, the night also is Thine."
The name signed to the check was that of Mrs.
Cyrus H. McCormick, that blessed woman whose lovely
benefactions, touched by the magic wand, were to make
all that he hoped for possible.
Now began the beautiful years of expansion in
which the prayers heard in secret were to be rewarded
openly. Through the long night he had believed that
the sun would rise, and lo, — the dawn !
But somehow, with the coming of the large sums,
whose pennies have become dimes and whose dimes
have grown into dollars, we feel just a little homesick
for the old want and poverty, the counting of the
coppers as if they were gold, the eager joy over the
dimes, the mingled astonishment and happiness over a
hundred dollar check. For there is something pathetic
in the faith of poverty which the faith of wealth
matches only with grandeur. Courage that does not
deal in amounts shines best in the dark. Faith is beau-
tiful in inverse proportion to figures involved, as in
direct proportion it is sublime. The glory of this man
had been that he had been given no talent at all to
work with but had kept believing he had been given
one, and out of that faith he had made ten other
150 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
talents. Ten times nothing had built an orphanage
and was about to build a college. Sheer love of God
had done the thing. An abandon of unselfishness had
mothered it. Faith that is ever allowed to suffer and
made to triumph, a confidence in the Father that was
serene in the storm and undiramed in the night, a soul
that was content but never satisfied, an ever growing
group of men and women who kept feeling the warmth
of his fire and drawing near thereunto with wonder
and praise, buildings rising from the ground to witness
that silent lips have moved in secret ; these are but a
few features of the delightful drama which the Play-
wright was staging in a spot so ideally commonplace
that it would be universally meaningful.
" For there is a future," he knew, " after the door is
opened into the black earth, and for that future I am
living and working.''
The story of his life in the years 1880 to 1884 is the
record of a steadily unfolding work, progressing from
darkness into light. The first day of each month he
wrote out his plans in detail, adding his prayer for their
accomplishment and later checked them off one by one
as having been done. By July of 1879 he had moved
his own little family into the attic of the first building
of the orphanage and had hauled the first load of rock
to begin the new boys' home, which was to be, and be
called Faith Cottage. The same month he noted with
joy that the five Presbyterian families connected with
his church when he assumed the pastorate had increased
to thirty. He is ever thinking of their welfare. In
September they are occupying the new Sunday School
room built in the shape of a T and he is thinking how
nice it will be to erect a neat and pretty library room
FOR THAT FUTURE 151
for tte young men of Clinton. As 1880 opens he is
planning to buy a new Universal job press for his
printing office. Soon his father was called to the
pastorate of the Presbyterian church on James Island,
and Miss Pattie Thornwell has collected enough money
to paint the Sunday School room.
It was in such ordinary, insignificant things that he
kept looking for God — and found Him.
As spring opens he writes that he wants to do " as
laborious work this month for the dear Lord as is pos-
sible," as part of which he starts work for a chapel at
Rockbridge, three miles west of Clinton. He is de-
lightfully surprised a little later to learn that Dr.
Woodrow has nominated him as Assembly Reporter
and that he has been elected unanimously.
The corner-stone of the second building of the or-
phanage, Faith Cottage, was laid on July 28th, the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his church, whose member-
ship had increased from exactly one hundred to exactly
one hundred and fifty in the last ten years.
There is the same steady progress in little things
that seem brilliant because of inner light in the follow-
ing year, 1881. In January he sells his home and
plans to build a new one nearer the orphanage. Faith
Cottage is opened on February 21st, and he has
dreamed a new academic building as absolutely neces-
sary to the progress of his work by early in June. Yet
his work is not confined to the orphanage, but on
June 21st he resolves to build a Presbyterian college
in Clinton, *' If it takes always to do it." He notes the
beautiful comet of 1881 in the northern skies, and on
July 24:th he and Mr. Bell are at Rockbridge. He is
preaching his first sermon there and is gratified over
152 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
the accomplishment of this work which he had first
planned ten years ago. It was this same year that saw
both a Baptist and Methodist church organized in Clin-
ton, of which he says : " It will be necessary for me to
work harder than I ev^er did before to secure the foun-
dations of my church. The movement to establish two
new churches at Clinton unsettles the members. It
almost creates a panic. But God, in His mercy, will,
in the course of a year or two, bring us out brighter
than ever. Now, our church succeeds because it is
the only church. Hereafter, it must succeed because
it is the best church. I am determined to throw my
efforts around the college and orphanage. They are
to be the bulwarks of Presbyterianism here in giving
us a Sunday School, prayer-meeting and congregation."
Later, in 1882, he began his work on the orphanage
seminary, the new academic building with its chapel
and class rooms and library and little museum and
with its high steeple, — the most beautiful building in
Clinton. *'I shall trust and trust, and so the work
shall be done," he says. At the same time the church
building is being remodelled, and on August 20th his
college got its charter. He spent a beautiful vacation
in June with his father on James Island, and when
fall comes Sim Whaley came to take charge of the
orphanage farm, and Miss Annie Starr, matron, left, to
be succeeded by Mrs. Boyd.
Thus his life was made up of toiling for the one
purpose in many forms. " I love dearly this work for
the orphans," he writes, " but I love still more my
preaching work."
In 1883, on another trip to Charleston, he saw elec-
tric lights for the first time, and having returned re-
"Home" for thirty-six years
FOR THAT FUTURE 163
freshed and invigorated from his vacation v^ith his
father, he seriously considers the erection of a wood-
working estabhshment, a sort of technical school for
the boys of the orphanage.
In April he introduced to his Presbytery Sam Ful-
ton, the first of the orphanage boys to become a
minister, as a candidate for that holy ofiice, and bap-
tized the child of Mollie Clatworthy, little Willie Lee
Holmes, the first orphanage child, during the closing
prayer of the Presbytery.
April finds the church tower being built and work
on the seminary being pushed for the first commence-
ment of Clinton College, which, when it did come,
found his daughter, Florence, in the graduating class,
the first to receive a diploma. Colonel Ball pre-
sented it.
The orphanage seminary was dedicated in July of
the same year, Dr, J. H. Thorn well preaching the ser-
mon, and Governor Thompson later presided at a great
meeting at the orphanage, in which he said things so
beautiful about the " Little Minister " and his orphan-
age that it made him hang his head in shame and take
revenge by praising the Governor.
It is a singular fact that the most famous utterance
of Emerson is not to be found in any of his poems or
essays but was saved from a note-book of one of his
students and seems to have been a chance remark made
in the course of a lecture. It was to this effect : That
if any man would do a thing better than it had ever
been done before, even if it were only to make a better
mouse trap than his neighbour, though he lived in a
wilderness, the world would make a beaten pathway to
his door. This is what happened at Clinton.
154 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
So in November he starts work for his new college
building. " Lord help me ! " he exclaims. " Oh, how
many ten thousand times have I uttered that prayer ?
Yea, Lord, help me, then the big job will be over," he
adds, "and we shall be ready for the next step,"— a
characteristic of his, that the greater his achievement
the greater his dream.
In December of 1883 there occurred one of those
typical events in his life, which was a perfect illustra-
tion of how that strange providence which we call
God was teaching him His will. December 1st came,
but no funds with it. "Thus far in December," he
writes, " which hitherto has been our harvest month,
we have received almost nothing for the orphanage. I
am greatly distressed about it. Up to this date we
have, for all causes, hardly received $150, and we are
in sore straits. Lord, Thou didst send us $1,000 each
December for years past, and now, O Lord, our bur-
dens and responsibilities are heavier and Thou sendest
us nothing. Lord, Lord, send help speedily. We need
Thy aid in great measure."
This was written on December 10th, and on Decem-
ber 27th we find these words in his diary :
" God has permitted us to have a delightful and a
blessed Christmas. The children had a beautiful
Christmas and good behaviour. On Christmas night
I received $125 in a letter and in addition $400 (!) for a
special work. I do not yet know what we shall use it
for, but I want it to go either to the endowment fund
or to some special building work. I had prayed for
$300 last week and again for $600 this week. I have
received both. Our receipts for this month have al-
ready overrun $1,000 besides at least $200 in pro-
FOR THAT FUTURE 165
visions. O God, out of my whole soul I thank Thee.
The nightmare of debt has been cleared away and now
we are ready for new things."
So that when 1884: comes he is planning a new build-
ing, with kitchen and storehouse and laundry and wind-
mill, which he is to call the Beehive. In the summer
Mrs. Liddell comes to replace " Miss Pattie " as teacher
at the orphanage, she having decided to get married
and move to Indiana, and Mrs. Simon ton comes to
succeed Mrs. Boyd as matron, and then while Sam
Fulton is planning to go to the seminary and is
*' preaching" his first sermon in Clinton, while they
are raising money for the college and work is begin-
ning on the Beehive, Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick sends
her check for $1,200, which is later to be increased, to
build a whole home for his orphans by herself !
And so at the close of 1884, the twentieth year of
his only pastorate, he names over the great gifts of God
to himself. There were the church, now over two
hundred strong, nearly furnished and steepled. Our
Monthly slowly but surely growing, labours in Presby-
tery and Synod, the orphanage, the corner-stone laying
of whose original home, on his tenth anniversary, had
been preceded by three hard years of money raising, to
which there had now been added a home for boys
(Faith Cottage), an academic building (the seminary), a
kitchen-laundry building (the Beehive), and now the
new home for boys (McCormick Home), and lastly the
Great New Job (the college). And as he named them
over, adding yet his own home and Rockbridge Chapel
to them, and even the digging of the flower pit and the
old laundry which had been turned into the workshop
and Mr. Scott's house, he wrote this sentence, under-
156 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
scoring and double spacing it : " So here I begin to
make an effort to prove tliat a little village churcli may
hecome a tower of strength y
But that was only the brilliant, social meaning of
those twenty years in which the little village church
was also the scenery in the background staged for the
setting forth of a deeper truth. That was his masterly
purpose, as it was also His. But if one in the audience
is entitled to judge, the greater purpose was to tell the
old story in a new way ; to whisper again the love of a
Father to children who are very young and very weak,
to set anew a human soul on fire that he might glow
with God, to reveal His abiding presence, who really
will do as much for anybody anywhere, who will do
as much for Him.
" Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," the
old church men used to say when they would describe
the universal faith. " That which ever, everywhere,
by all " is believed. That is also the rule whereby
prayers are answered. It is an old saying that to
reward folly would be to people the world with fools.
Similarly to play favourites in prayer answering would
be to people the world with the lazy and inefficient.
When God answers pra3^er He answers qualities which
everywhere, ever, by all should be possessed. Each
such case is a deed-parable, each of them is a ^' Yes "
from Jehovah w^ho never fails to answer the question
of faith proceeding on her dangerous way, though He
hide His answer among passing events so secretly that
he who would count his mercies must search for them.
It matters, indeed, whether a little village may become
" a tower of strength " or not but who can measure the
infinite significance of one " Yes " from the sky ?
FOR THAT FUTURE 157
Shortly after the beginning of 1885, that fine old
missionary preacher, Rev. Zelotes Lee Holmes, died.
His had been the happy privilege of founding the little
mission church at Clinton and the church was saddened
by the news of his death.
In May following, the orphanage office had received
its first typewriter and the president was becoming
proficient in its use. He was forty -three years old and
had founded an orphanage and a college by hand and
kerosene, but only because typewriters and electric
lights had not yet been possible, for his abiding char-
acteristic was to take immediate advantage of any new
improvement. The same month he made a trip to
Washington and shook hands with President Cleve-
land.
His children spent the summer vacation with their
Grandfather Jacobs on James Island and when they
returned he writes : " The children are all back with
me and dearer to me than ever. O God, bless my
children. I give them every one to Thee. Do with
them as seemeth good in Thy sight ! Oh, how eagerly
I long for some of my boys to enter the ministry."
He was not to wait long to have that prayer an-
swered. In June of the very next year his son. States,
had about made up his mind to do that very thing.
" Oh, that God would keep him in that mind," his
father exclaimed, "and enable him to love the Lord
more and more."
In September one of his blessings came in the guise
of a calamity, for the front wall of the new college
building gave way, happily without loss of life, neces-
sitating a repair bill of only seventy-five dollars, which
was quadruply oversubsqribed. In October the faculty
158 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
of the college was chosen, Rev. R. P. Smith at the
head as president. As the opening day approached,
he felt, in his own words, as if " I have now laid pretty
much the foundation of all the work I expect to do in
life. But every department of it is to be pressed on to
a higher fulfillment of plans. I have to make a college
out of our college — a noble charity out of the orphan-
age, a splendid church out of my church, a better paper
out of Our Monthly^ and to be a leader in Presbyterial
labours."
Yet he was almost immediately at his old construct-
ive task again, urging Mr. M. S. Bailey to give Clinton
a bank, and getting ready to twist the Seaboard Air
Line out of its course so that his " city " might have
another railroad. On February 15th ('86) he hauled
the first load for his new printing oifice, and at last, on
his forty -fourth birthday, on March 15, 1886, his col-
lege was happily opened. " This day," he writes, " by
the goodness of God, I was enabled to set in order the
Presbyterian College of Clinton, South Carolina. At
9 : 30 A. M., in the presence of eighty or more students
and the six teachers, I offered the first prayer ever
offered in the house and solemnly gave it to the Lord.
At 3 p. M. we met in the college chapel, the pupils of
the orphanage being present, and I addressed the as-
sembly as to the * Manner of the Kingdom.' We also
had addresses from Mr. Smith and Mr. Barnes. After
this I succeeded in persuading the association to resolve
to raise one thousand dollars to complete the house, and
surely it will be done." In those last few words is re-
vealed a charming characteristic of this man who kept
steadily winning great victories. It was his apprecia-
tion of little victories, "Each baby was to him an
FOR THAT FUTURE 159
adult, potentially. It was a little college but it would
grow. All men who had ever amounted to much had
done so. He refused to deny himself a great future by
failing to trust a little present.
And so we come to the close of the fierce struggle
period of his life. For forty-four years he has been
passing through poverty, obscurity, danger, and every
conceivable discouragement. Single-handed, with a
broken sword he had faced every enemy bitterly
known to those who contend for the ideal thing. He
had developed a magnificent courage and a faith that
knew, in this arena where the mighty depend wisely
on the One alone. Fear and hope and prayer and
trust and gratitude and love had wrought their blessed
ministry in his soul, had expressed themselves in his
life, and henceforth, because he had played his part so
well that he knew not how well he had played it, his
Lord was to set him in a broad place.
Like John of old, he was ready now to be shown to
Israel.
XY
<'FOR THY SAKE^'
Thus, silent, I have heard the Voiceless speak.
The Formless I have seen walk by my side,
And I have touched the hand of One, my guide,
Whom all the vy^orld could find if it would seek.
THERE is this very beautiful thing about one's
love for God : If a man really loves God he
loves everything that God has made. This
would seem to be the universe.
It was for that reason that Wm. P. Jacobs loved to
travel, which love had lured him on from his earliest
days. Only a few commonplace trips had come into
his life but he saw much in them, and they gave him
that greater joy which is born of an unlimited admira-
tion for and gratitude to God. One cannot understand
even his attachment to Clinton without remembering
that Jesus Christ was as real and as near to him as
Faith Cottage. He took his religion so seriously that
it did to him what its custom is, it made him uniquely
great.
Now for many long years he had planned a trip to
Europe. During his boyhood days it had been his
dream and while, for a score of years, he struggled in
poverty and debt the dim hope of it cheered and tanta-
lized him alternately. The time had come now to save
for it.
160
''FOR THY SAKE" 161
So one day he set aside his first five dollars. He
would begin if it took "always."
But He had other uses for that five dollars, although
it was the only five dollars in the house at the time.
For a poor old, broken-down Presbyterian came that
evening to see him, and being invited to stay all night
told so sad a story that he was given that live dollars
to pay his way to Charleston. In doing it the giver
said to his Friend : " Lord, I give this to this poor man
for Thy sake. Eepay me if Thou seest I need it." It
was a sweet and daring challenge to Him who once
said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
And when the answer came, a few days later, it was
in sixtyfold measure. For he received a letter from
Mrs. McCormick, the good angel by whom He sent,
containing a check for three hundred dollars with the
request that he use it in a trip to Europe !
It was very wonderful. But then one should not ex-
pect a God to repay kindness in a niggardly measure.
Here was a man who was actually more interested
in working for God than he was in working for him-
self. One of the most astonishing sentences in his
whole diary he had penned, when, in May, 1881, he
began building his own new home. "I have begun
work on my house," he v^^rote, " but for some reason I
do not take the pleasure in it that I would if it were
for some suitable purpose connected with the orphan-
age." He was utterly absorbed in his spiritual adven-
ture and is it surprising that he should be so fascinated
when the next entry reads : " Such things as this have
happened to me over and over again these many years.
Last week at each of the three mails, I did not receive
162 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
a single cent for the orphanage. It is true that we did
not need the money and so this did not distress me.
But on Monday morning my mind was greatly exer-
cised with the longing for a future life, and Satan sug-
gested a hundred doubts. My soul was darkened.
Then I prayed the Lord for a clear light, asking Him
to give me ocular proof. I thought of what He said
to Ahaz and then I asked that the sign should be, that
at each mail this week I should receive one letter con-
taining aid for the orphanage. JSTow, it often happens
thus — I will get eight or ten letters with money one
mail, and nothing for several mails thereafter, but this
week though I received many letters, yet at each mail
/ received just one money letter. What a good God is
mine. Hundreds of times Thou hast given me the
thing I asked."
And now He had given him a thing he had not asked,
a trip to the wonder-lands of the old world. As if to
crown his going with added love, his congregation
made up a little purse for him also. He was the first
Clintonian to " go abroad," as he was the first to build
a two-story house, or a steepled church, or to plan a
bank or a cotton-mill, or to set type and print a paper,
or to write a poem, or build an orphanage or college.
He was Christian civilization set down in a little obscure,
dilapidated, crossroads piece of a place. For twenty-
two years he had poured out his best thoughts, noblest
ideals and finest purposes there as if God were present
and bushes could burn in any desert, and now he leaves
for the fulfillment of a darling wish borne on the gen-
erosity of friends near and far. The bread that he had
cast upon the waters he had found, after many days.
To trace the route and tell the story of his trip is
''FOR THY SAKE" 163
not the important thing, but again it is his spirit that
attracts our attention, ever cherishing his new experi-
ences and training them also to serve his purposes.
Of course he visited the Stockvrell Orphanage and
heard the great Spurgeon in his tabernacle, counting
him hardly the equal of Girardeau or Palmer as an
orator and thinker. Of the orphanage he writes : " It
is far larger than I thought and I am delighted with
it. The buildings are grand in their way, everything
in perfect order and very neat. The children looked
healthy and were to start on their month's vacation (I
am always getting in just in the nick of time). Spurgeon
has fine playgrounds for his children— they attend the
tabernacle preaching— are a good set of children—
don't fight (?). I like his cottage arrangement. He
keeps the children till fourteen, and then the girls stay
two years longer to help in domestic work. I don't
like that or his dormitory plan, but the work is splen-
didly done from his point of view, that is, the English."
He sat in the old stone chimney seat where Shake-
speare the boy sat, " and caught no inspiration." " One
despairs after seeing Oxford," he exclaimed, thinking
doubtless of the five thousand dollar beginning of his
own college. He thought the music at St. Paul's,
where Canon Liddon preached, was superb, but " dear
me, I am no Episcopalian ! " He heard Dr. Joseph
Parker in the City Temple. " Spurgeon attacked Evo-
lution, but Parker seemed to think it but a part of a
not understood plan." He visited the National Art
Gallery and the Kensington Art Museum and, of
course, Westminster Abbey. He liked touring England,
but " in all my tramp I have not seen a watermelon, or
a peach, or a banana, or a darky. And while I recog-
164 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JA(X)BS
nize all I see, there are multitudes of things I do not
see. I have not seen rice or hominy since I left home.
If this absence of things I love is to go on for a month
or so, I'll get homesick."
Afterwards came Holland with its quaint communities
and windmills, and Belgium, including something more
than Brussels, and then we find him on the Rhine. " I
too am enthusiastic henceforth over the beautiful,
populous, antique, wonderful Rhine." He found
Heidelberg ablaze with banners, for the Crown Prince,
Frederick William, was in towm and it w^as the five
hundredth anniversary of Heidelberg University, so
rooms being at ten dollars the day his visit was short.
He took courage again about his college, however,
thinking that it would have buildings better than
Heidelberg before its serai-centennial. It pleased him
to note that in Germany they seemed to know what
corn is but no mules nor darkies nor turkey buzzards
nor watermelons. He turned on his heel at Milan,
having seen the wonderful cathedral there and noted
the difference between Catholic Italy and bonny Eng-
land or happy, contented Germany.
He came back by Mont Blanc, Berne, Geneva.
" We thought the ascent of the Alps unutterably
grand," he wrote, " as we came in from Italy, but lan-
guage fails me to describe the miles on miles that fol-
loAved. Every combination to thrill the heart of an
enthusiast over nature was there. The snow-covered
mountains, tremendous cliffs, waterfalls till it was
weariness to count them, beautiful lakes — (Zug and
Lucerne), quaint, high-perched villages, sharp eyries for
the eagle, cliffs and crags and boulders, plains strewn
with mighty masses of brecchia, foaming torrents, the
"FOR THY SAKE^' 165
quaintly dressed people, the oft-recurriDg tunnels — so
that we would dash out of a mountain to hang for a
few moments in dizzy space and then right into the
darkness of night again. I never can forget this day's
experiences ! I have walked where God has wrought
His miracles of power, and I have seen the stupendous
works of man made in the image of God."
Thence to Paris, where he found letters from home !
In Paris he, by chance, wandered into the Catholic
church from which the tocsin for the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew sounded. '* No wonder I felt ill at
ease ! " he exclaimed later. Of Paris he says, " I have
seen no court-house like the Hotel de Yiile of Brussels ;
no cathedral like that in Milan ; no museum like that
in London ; no street as picturesque as Princess Street
in Edinburgh ; no raib^oad so majestic as the St. Got-
thard ; yet Paris, in its way, is first of all the cities I
have seen,— but the women are only men in France."
And thence home : " The first sight that greeted my
eye was a darky ! the next was a great fruit store and
plenty of bananas ! And the streets were so muddy !
And oh, what immensity of telegraph wires ! and what
a variety of architecture ! "
And the next thing to greet him was news of the
earthquake ! Charleston had been severely shaken
and the whole Appalachian Seaboard felt tremors of
greater or less severity for months thereafter. At Clin-
ton there had been no damage but much fright.
He had a royal reception at the first prayer-meeting
after his arrival. He found that Mr. Scott had finished
painting the McCormick Home and that the plastering
on the second floor of the college building was finished.
He wrote the story of the Great Trip in the little
166 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
diary with its memory leaves of flowers brought from
Europe, hawthorne from Stratford on Avon, a leaf
from Shakespeare's tree, pressed flowers from Brunig
Pass and Mont Blanc, an ivy leaf from old Heidelberg,
and settled down to sermons, and funerals, and wed-
dings, and endeavouring to raise money to finish plaster-
ing another floor of the college and to feed and clothe
little orphan children in the name of Jesus.
His college opened on September 22d with seventy
pupils ! It pleased him and he exclaims : " I have a
greater and heavier work to do in this college than even
in the orphanage ! "
Perhaps he was thinking of Oxford and Heidelberg.
And having seen and measured both he had not
despaired.
XVI
NOONDAY
He, a greedless man and needless,
Sanctified the sod,
For a deedless church and creedless
Struck, with budded rod,
In a heedless world and redeless
Glowed with God.
ON March 15, 1887, Wm. P. Jacobs was forty-
five years old and at the height of his physical
and intellectual power. For twenty-three
years he had been the pastor of the Clinton Church.
It had been the sword wherewith he had struck for his
ideals. He had been labouring with no instrument not
universally possessed nor was his God a new one. Yet
things had kept happening with him that were and are
exceedingly uncommon ; though they always happen
under the same conditions. It was the old story of the
laboratory experiment which may be performed with
equal certainty in Clinton or London if only the same
reagents are used. In the clear white light of his
midday sun we may well look upon this character, so
utterly unique and so amazingly blessed of God, asking
of the record an explanation of his power and remem-
bering that God plays no favourites.
We sketch briefly the movement of his personal his-
tory during this noonday period from 1887-1894 in-
clusive. As 1889 opens we find him writing from his
167
168 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
new desk in the printing office, calling that day a
" Stathmos in my journey towards the great work of
the future, my literary and theological efforts." This
was his one beautiful dream that he did not ever find
time to realize. Gifted with a pen that could write
with either tears or blood he used it in winning bread
for his orphans, life for his college and souls for his
church.
" I have been very busy all this month," he writes,
" answering letters received for the orphanage. I love
this work. It is intensely practical but the Master
seems to have appointed me to it. I would rather be
engaged upon literary work, work which would require
more freedom from interruption than I get now, where
so many people want to see me on all sorts of things
and so many odds and ends of jobs have to be attended
to. But I must begin. The years are speeding by. I
am reading a good deal, mainly travels and lighter
theology and history. It rests me to read such and
gives me bright, fresh ideas for Sunday work."
In April his daughter surprised him with the news
of her engagement to Mr. Wm. J. Bailey, son of his
lifelong friend, M. S. Bailey. " Am I growing old ? "
he asks. '' Am I soon to have a daughter married ? "
The following month he was sent as a commissioner to
the Assembly in St. Louis where he was plunged into
the midst of the intense debate on Organic Union with
the Northern Church. Shortly after his return his son
Ferdinand was graduated from his college. " How
quickly time passes," he murmurs. *' Eternity will
soon be here ! " The year is filled out with the custom-
ary duties in church and orphanage and college. In
September he writes :
NOONDAY 169
" Our college has opened splendidly. We have
ninety already and the probability is for a still greater
increase of patronage. I am sure that we will have
over a hundred this year. In the orphanage and college
there are now nearly one hundred and fifty young
people. This is a large number for me to be respon-
sible for. I have a noble field for work. How often I
recall the talk with Dr. G — — in 18Y3, when he tried
to convince me that I should seek a broader field of
labour than poor little Clinton, and I replied that their
souls were as much worth saving as any, anywhere.
Blessed be my Master, who has rewarded me and is
doing for me more abundantly than I dared then to
ask. And there are yet things before us, — what, I
cannot say, but there is growth for my little church in
every department."
As the year closes he is already seriously considering
the advisability of giving up his church work and de-
voting all his time to " The Church of the Fatherless."
As the following year opens he speaks of prospects
brighter than ever and of harder and better work. But
soon calamity is upon him. In March Mr. W. B. Bell,
faithful elder and long-time treasurer of both church
and orphanage, died. President Smith resigned his
position at the head of the college. Mr. Watts left the
management of the orphanage farm. North Carolina
began talking of emulating his example by founding an
orphanage of their own, thus cutting off his income
from that great Synod. '' God speed them," he prayed.
In March he devoted six hours of each of four days to
writing the story of the orphanage in a little booklet,
** The Lord's Care ; " and in April he is delighted over
the reception of his son Ferdinand as a candidate for
170 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
the gospel ministry by the Presbytery. On May 2Sth
the corner-stone of Memorial Hall was laid. It was a
new triumph and responsibility towards which his
attitude was, — " What a call the Lord's blessing is to
an increased activity. ... I can do anything
with Thee to strengthen me ! " By the middle of
August he had secured a new president for the college,
Prof. J. W. Kennedy, and on September 12th his
daughter was married.
In the very first month of 1889 he bought five
shares of building and loan stock which he calculated
would amount to $1,000 by 1896, when he was hoping
to enjoy '' the one great pleasure of my life — a trip to
the Holy Land." In April he was happy over giving
his second son, States, to the ministry. That same
spring came the first serious break in his health. His
general condition was bad and his throat failed. It
w^as necessary to have an operation on it and for
months thereafter he was prohibited from speaking
publicly. He gave up Rockbridge permanently. In
May he dedicated Memorial Hall and that same day
he received a telegram from Mrs. McCormick offering
another building. What a contrast to those three long
years of anxious struggle during which he painfully
collected the money for his first building. In June
Erskine College conferred on him the degree of D. D.
In September his dream of many years is beginning to
be realized and Clinton seems in a fair way to get
another railroad. In September he is sick in bed and
for the first time in twenty-five years failed to get to
Presbytery. Ferdinands Sr. and Jr., his father and son,
filled his pulpit for him. Grading on the big new rail-
road began, the splendid trunk line, the Georgia, Caro-
NOONDAY lYl
lina and Northern, that was to connect New York and
Clinton and Atlanta, but it was not so wonderful a day
as when the little Laurens railroad ran up to the very
heart of Clinton in that other miracled hour of the
long ago.
On January 6, 1890, Prof. W. S. Lee, his splendid
coadjutor in the high school and college, died, and in
March Dr. Boozer was critically ill. One night the
prayer-meeting interceded mightily for his recovery.
On the vfay home the pastor stopped by his home and
was told that a sudden change for the better had just
taken place. He steadily recovered. In April our
orphanage and college builder is planning a modern
stone church building for his flock, costing not less
than $20,000, with electric or gas lights and every
modern convenience. Such was the result of the days
of struggle to get enough money to paint the Sunday
School room. In June he notes happily his son Ferdi-
nand's success in raising funds for the erection of a new
college building. The same month his second son.
States, is graduated from college, and with his diploma
wins the Essayist's Medal. By this time Clinton has a
full thousand inhabitants !
In July came his visit to New York and Niagara,
which he "did" thoroughly though his ill health pre-
vented the fullest enjoyment. Upon his return the
new railroad (the " G. C. & N.") was running its engines
into town. " God grant that it may be for Plis glor}^
and the good of His cause here," was his prayer. The
Christmas Sabbath of that year saw his son States
preaching for him. "God help the lad," he prayed.
Eight of his members were now studying for the
ministry !
172 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
In February of 1891 he received a heavy blow in
the death of President J. W. Kennedy, whose splendid
ability and great popularity had steadied the work of
the college. The same month his son Ferdinand was
chosen professor of Biblical and religious literature
in the institution. He notes this with pleasure, re-
marking that in certain lines the boy had greater abil-
ities than his father. In May he dug the foundation
for the Nellie Scott Library at the orphanage, and in
July was nursing States who had come down with
typhoid fever in Bishop ville. On September 9th he
married Ferdinand to Miss Elliott Duckett of Clin-
ton.
In 1892 he entered upon his fiftieth year of life,
which found him busy finishing the Nellie Scott
Library and beginning the Technological School for
Boys. In April his friend, Gus Smyth, wrote pledging
two thousand dollars for the Augustine Home, a me-
morial to his little son. The autumn brought a delight-
ful trip to Barium Springs Orphanage, the new institu-
tion of the Synod of North Carolina, modelled after
and inspired by Thornwell, where he dedicated two
buildings, receiving a beautiful tribute of thanks from
the Synod of North Carolina for his touching address.
Shortly afterwards he established the Mission Training
School at the orphanage for the purposo of efficiently
training young women for foreign and home mission
work.
On his fifty-first birthday he was happy over the
purchase of the Southern Presbyterian by a company
of his own congregation and its removal to Clinton.
This event completed the making of his town the
Presbyterian center of the state. The little village
NOONDAY 173
church had indeed become a tower of strength even as
he had prayed and planned.
On July 9, 1893, he appeared on the streets of Clin-
ton for the first time on his bicycle, a machine which
for the next decade was to be invaluable to him in his
pastoral visiting as well as orphanage work where the
covering of distance without buggy, horse or auto-
mobile was necessary. On August lYth he visited the
World's Fair at Chicago, continually on the lookout
for new ideas that might help Clinton or the orphans.
On November 30th he buried Mr. Green, the last link
remaining of his official corps of thirty years before,
and the same autumn organized the first class of the
New Mission Training School with a membership of
three, Miss Ella Bell, Miss Janie Duckett and Miss
Maggie Burleyson.
Eighteen-ninety-f our found him busy gathering funds
for the purchase of a Babcock press with his son Dil-
lard in charge of his printing office and serving as
general assistant in all the other orphanage work. He
was delighted with " the way the lad takes hold."
The death of his father on March 11th was the great
sorrow of the year, which was not without its other
sore trials. In September he united his youngest sister,
Bessie, and Prof. Chas. E. Little of the Peabody College
for Teachers in wedlock, and in November travelled a
thousand miles to preach one sermon, dedicating the
new church of his son States at Columbus, Mis-
sissippi.
In all these years he kept hard at work on matters
large and small. " To be holy, to be useful, to be wise,
I am after these three ! " he declared, and when troubles
assailed him in church and orphanage and during this
174 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
period, especially in the college, he wrote in his little
memorandum book the famous words of Shaftesbury :
"Let no man despair in a good cause; let him per-
severe, persevere, persevere ! "
Such were the simple, ordinary events of noonday
life told as a chronicle. There would appear to be
nothing remarkable about them. But there was.
Take for example an ordinary day's work. Let him
tell the story of it : " This day, rose in a heavy rain ;
read the "Word ; then breakfast and worship ; letters
written ; proofs corrected ; articles for Our Monthly ;
got Ferdie off for Princeton, N. J. ; then a visitor, next
— three hours' session of the faculty ; dinner ; the sick
children all visited ; the workmen started on two build-
ings ; a visit to our dying Brother Milner ; then to
Mrs. Jones' ; then to Mrs. Vance's and Florence ; then
to see Hale Shands who is ver}'- ill ; then to the college
and Memorial Hall ; supper ; took the children to the
Baptist Church; after that, a call at the McCormick
Home, and at 10 p. ^i. answered a summons to see
Mr. Little's dying child ; numberless other little things.
NOONDAY 175
That is a sample of my day's work, and I am still
entertaining a house full of work, and enjoying my
vacation ! "
This again, while perhaps a trifle fuller day than
those of most men, would seem to the casual observer
to have nothing unusual in it.
But there was.
For when we examine it carefully, it is as if a micro-
scope were turned on common sand and a million
diamond-brilliaut surfaces appeared.
*'I asked the Lord," he writes on one such day, "the
first day of this week, to direct me by an act of Provi-
dence, as to whether a certain matter I had committed
to Him would be cared for by Him, and whether I
must trust that His disposition of it would be for my
good, the good of His work committed to me, and of
all concerned. I asked Him to give His answer — yes
— by sending me this week some special sum of money
at such time and in such way as that my mind would
be surely convinced.
" On Monday, Tuesday, no such evidence came.
" This day, the 20th, is also the twenty-second anni-
versary of my marriage. It is the very day that I ex-
pected the business to be settled. This evening I received
three letters enclosing $20, $20 and $20.22 respectively.
This and no more. I consider it a wonderful and exact
answer to my inquiry and hence whatever the cause of
events may be as to the business I put under His care, I
shall say — Deus, lux mea, Salvator mens. Dirigit mihi
vias."
And when we examine the results of such days they
seem equally amazing, for in this forgotten crossroads
village philanthropy and education and religion have
1Y6 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
found such growth as already to have attracted the
attention of the State and the Church.
" God has blessed me wonderfully," he gloats as if
over old gold, " in turning the thoughts of so many of
my young people to the gospel ministry. Kichols
Holmes, just licensed, was first a member of my
church. Dent Brannen, Sam Fulton, — just ordained
for Japan, Clark Jennings, Ed Milner, my own son
Ferdie, all those within the year past, and now I hear
that Sam Byrd, Darby Fulton, Willie Jennings all
have the same under advisement. . . . O God,
direct them and enable me to advise them aright. . . .
How earnestly I have desired to make the orphanage a
great medium of entrance to the ministry and the
college its co-worker. The Lord is giving me my
desires. Who could doubt such a God ? "
All this can have but one meaning : that there is in
life, in nature, in history an Organizing Power whose
purpose is definite and whose will is ascertainable.
This Power is specially benevolent to those who seek
to know and do His will. All that He has made. He
is, and He is infinitely more conscious of us than we
are of Him. Included in His purpose are all events of
our tiny lives and the thoughts of myriad planets like
and unlike ours, for He is as infinitely little as He is
infinitely large. His are the thoughts, the emotions,
the deeds of all mankind. He is the fear that we have
of Him and the love we feel for Him. He is the
prayer we breathe for help and the answer to that
prayer as He is also the anxiety that it might not be
answered. All these are but parts of His Providence
in which He has ordained the singular law that certain
answers always follow certain prayers. ]S"ote the beauti-
NOONDAY 177
f ul circle of it : To a chosen soul He gives a great desire,
the expression of which is toil and prayer and faith
that the dream may come true. That is why faith is
the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of
things not seen. Its coming true is regarded as the
answer, the part that God played in the affair. It was
all His.
And the fine object of it is not to build churches nor
orphanages nor colleges but souls. He seems to be
ever trying to make something in His own image. All
His rewards and punishments point to that end. Such
are all answers to prayer, including those so quick and
vivid as to seem to be words spoken from heaven. By
them He reveals Himself, setting His stamp of approval
upon certain types of character and conduct. He seems
to delight in our watching Him and becoming conscious
of His presence in our and all affairs. This is what is
called " seeing God," who is just as visible as the wind
and as audible as the storm and as tangible as the
tornado.
So we come to the purpose of this book which is to
view a soul whom the Power signally favoured, from
which favour we may argue approval and from which
approval we may take example.
XVII
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER
How like to her who ventured to the door
Of Persian palace, driven and afraid,
Not knowing how she for the times was made
To wield the sceptre that she trembled o'er,
THERE came a little child once to the Thorn-
well Orphanage and wandered over the
beautiful wooded grounds and through the
happy comfortable homes. She heard the matron's
motherly words and the sweet laughter of the children.
She saw the whirring machinery in the Tech and the
pretty exhibits in the Museum, and watched the boys
and girls thronging the schoolrooms and playgrounds.
She felt the wonderful spirit of love and sympathy
everywhere and learned of how a Father's hand pro-
vided for His own each day their daily bread. And
over all and in all this beautiful mechanism of love she
discovered " Doctor," who raised the money and
directed the life and interpreted the meaning of her
wonderful new found world, and one day, that her
conviction might be verified, she asked of a teacher the
question : " Is Doctor God ? "
A wise teacher would have pondered that illuminat-
ing question a long, long while and then answered :
'' Yes."
To do things is wonderful but to see God in them is
a surpassing glory.
178
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 1T9
What is the interpretation of it all, from the stand-
point of Jehovah, if a man may write so boldly ? It
was not for the sake of this particular orphanage surely,
that such things were done as we have seen and shall
see and such as our little wanderer saw. Other or-
phanages dot the land — they are common enough —
filled with children as much His as those at Thorn well.
He is no more interested in those at Clinton than others
elsewhere. The key lies in the goal of life which is to
know God. It would seem that He is ready to reveal
Himself to those who are fit for that revelation. It is
a matter of spiritual condition containing certain pro-
portions of faith, loyalty, love, prayer, purity, persist-
ence, power and an utter abandonment of selfishness.
This is the problem in spiritual mathematics difficult,
but soluble. The objects involved are incidental only.
It may be worked out in orphans or college students or
dollars or conversions indiscriminately just as the same
rule holds in addition whether it concerns oranges or
grapefruit.
For example : when we read the following paragraph
in a man's diary we know we are viewing a certain
type of soul.
" I have been much worried about our college lately.
The teachers certainly have not the spirit of faith.
They tell us expressly that they are looking for money
and unless they can get the money they will not serve
us. That lot had better arrange to leave. O Lord,
send consecrated men and women here.
" I have served the people of Clinton for twenty-five
years without demanding a guaranteed salary and all
has worked well."
We are impressed, as the story of this midday period
180 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
of life is revealed, with the attitude of this soul to all
that he saw. For example, knowing how long he had
looked forward to seeing the World's Fair at Chi-
cago in 1893, we can sympathize with this sigh of
relief :
" I rejoice that the World's Fair is to be closed on Sun-
day. I can go now. I would not have done so with a
good conscience otherwise. In fact, I could not have
agreed to go at all."
Such feeling did not spring from narrow-mindedness
but from a loyalty to his chief, so intense as to elimi-
nate all joy in persons or things who were slackers.
And note the last sentence in this paragraph from his
diary :
" The crowd was simply immense. It was the big-
gest crowd I ever saw or ever expect to see again —
165,681 paid admissions, besides 30,000 free passes.
Possibly over 200,000 in all. It was human heads as
far as the eye could reach. I am simply overwhelmed
by the massiveness of the multitude. What will it be
in God's great day ! "
When that sad morning came on which he learned of
the death of his father there came with it another op-
portunity to look down into the deeps, as the great
waves swept the ocean's bottom on their parting, and
see the foundations of his life. See how naturally
though sorrowfully his thoughts wend their way
towards the throne :
" On yesterday morning at Sunday School, with 250
pupils and teachers around me, I was stunned by a tele-
gram handed me, by whom I know not, telling me
that on Sabbath morning at 12 : 30 ray dear old father
was suddenly summoned to his glorious reward.
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 181
" I am so, so sorry to part with him. No man on
earth is as dear to me as he is, and yet I could not call
him back. His work on earth is ended and now he has
gone to his exceeding great reward. Dear old Father,
how tenderly I loved you ! It is very hard to think
that I will see yoa and speak with you no more on
earth. My heart yearns to you. Alas ! Alas ! Little
thought I when we parted in Atlanta after that evening
meal, that we were to meet no more this side of the
eternal throne. But I shall meet you there, my father.
The wheels of time's chariot fly swiftly. I am already
on the down grade and the way will seem very short
when it is all over. Lord, help me to live that I may
know how to die."
Three years before he had visited Yorkville, his
birthpla.ce, where his father had lived and toiled,
founding the Presbyterian Church there, from which
he went to accept the professorship of Mathematics and
Astronomy in Oglethorpe University. Of this visit he
says :
*' I spent one evening in hunting up the sites in
Yorkville connected with my infant days. I found the
house where I was born, the one in which Father taught
school, the one in which he boarded when first he went
to Yorkville, the Bratton house in which my mother
died, the court-house where Father preached when first
he began his work, the little old church which was
built first, where I was baptized by God-fearing
Bishop, and the house (Mr. SimriFs) where I spent a
year after Mother's death. It is surprising that so
many of these houses remain. They interested me
deeply."
" I was told by Brother English that mine is the first
182 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
name occurring on the baptismal record of the York-
ville church and that those early records are in Father's
handwriting."
" I have a good father," he had once written in his
journal when, in boyhood days, he had received some
simple favour from his hand. It was always a pleasure
to the son to know that the last summers of the father's
life had customarily been spent with him in Clinton,
his " Summer Home." Thither he w^ould come from
Nashville in the late spring, bringing the gentle bene-
diction of a kindly holiness to the many who waited
annually for his coming with " Grandma." When the
bonds of fourscore tied him to the armchair he loved,
he would sit for hours reading his Greek Testament or
some volume on metaphysics or astronomy and at in-
tervals tell stories to his grandchildren. It was from
his gracious lips that one of them heard first of Ogle-
thorpe University and her former glory, of her wonder-
ful quarter-century of service until her death at Gettys-
burg, of her great white Doric pillars and beautiful
chapel and orrery by which any student might see for
himself how God twirled His planets about the sun.
And though they were spoken in the last hour before
sunset those words yet abide in light.
It is interesting also to note the attitude of our
country pastor to his Synod when in his opinion the
Synod was wrong. Never a word of criticism or re-
buke, only that quiet determination : " They shall not
pass!" All Synods, Presbyteries, Assemblies, and
other church courts were to him sacred means to an
end, but ever only means. And so when the Synod de-
clined his college, knowing that the thing he had made
was the gracious handiwork of God, he wrote :
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 183
" Brother Murray brought up the college and tried
to get it ' adopted ' but failed. I think it best to leave
that matter alone. We had better trust in the Lord
than the Synod of South Carolina."
And of a similar sort was the man who could face a
fierce ecclesiastical contest thus :
" Organic union has been the one all-absorbing topic
at this Assembly. It is going to convulse our whole
church and I fear rend it with violence and passion.
S — -, P and others are bitter in their opposition
to it and proclaim their purpose to tear the church in
pieces rather than to submit to it. This is not the
spirit of God.
'' My own views are that if the Northern Church will
yield to a plan for a separate African Assembly and
will clearly assert the unpolitical character of the
church, I can conscientiously unite with them, but in
the meanwhile, so great are the obstacles in the way,
when the question comes up in the Presbytery I will
vote against it, believing that more effective work can
be done by two Presbyterian denominations than by
one. Lord, save Thy church from disaster."
And when a country pastor spends a month among
the great, wealthy churches of New York City and
comes back with so fine a difference in his heart as he
hereinafter expresses, we recall that Moses, Elijah and
Paul were taught of God in the Wilderness :
" One thought has forced itself on me, that the
pastors (in New York) have circumscribed spheres of
labour, do not go outside of it, and when the three or
four hundred who are in their care leave the city, their
homes are empty and they go too ; while hundreds of
thousands of practical heathen surge past their church
184 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
doors. Surely there is some better way than this and
by the grace of God I am determined to count every
man, woman and child in Clinton as under my care un-
less I know him to be a Methodist or Baptist. The
strangers who go to church I will care for. So help
me, oh, my Father."
And with what words should we describe the broad-
minded charity of the man who could say " God speed
them" when a group of leaders separated a whole
wealthy and liberal state from among his supporting
synods as he did time and time again when other or-
phanages sprang up like sturdy little oaks around the
parent tree ? He took delight in them as if it were
good that God should work as mightily through others
as through himself. He was not even jealous when
the Baptists, many of whom had been supporting
Thornwell, established their own institution. Of this
he writes :
" The Baptist Orphanage is to be located at Green-
wood. It will be near and I will often have the privi-
lege of visiting them. There is a need for it and I
think it will rather tend to increase the zeal of Presby-
terians for our work here."
But we are certainly getting a " close up " on the
very heart of a man when we find that he considers
his children as well as himself the property of God.
They were given to him but he immediately gave them
back. When his God called his two oldest sons to the
ministry delight was in his exclamation, " I have two
more boys, O God, take them also ! " He seemed to be
so pleased with his life of poverty and sacrifice that he
would have his children enjoy them as if he had found
some sweet compensation that he would have them
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 185
also taste. When his son, States, was taken with
typhoid fever he wrote :
"I am sitting in the Phoenix Hotel, Bishopville,
Sumter County, looking out on level fields and a few
frame buildings in the foreground. It is God's holy
Sabbath. This morning I preached to the Bishopville
Presbyterians in the town hall. But it was not for
that I came here. States is ill with typhoid fever and
I am summoned to be near him. His case is not, by
any means, a very bad one, but it is slow and the
disease is insidious, but I long ago put my children in
God's hands. They belong to Him. I trust them to
Him, even while I pray most earnestly for their recov-
ery. I learned when little Ida died that there were
worse things than death. ISTevertheless, Almighty
Father, give my boy a long and useful life."
So this interesting thing happened that he was ever
ready, by necessary sacrifice, to give his children any-
thing that made for their spiritual, religious or educa-
tional welfare but he was no more interested in worldly
glory or prosperity for them than for himself. His
was a spirit of service to God and the less said about
it the better. Consequently great honours came which
he always looked on with suspicion lest he might seem
to have ^sought them for himself or for his children.
Hear him as he glories :
" I glory in the sorrows, trials and burdens of these
eighteen months as well as in their rewards. Thou
didst cause me to see great and sore travail but Thou
hast also greatly comforted me. I have seen Thy work
here prosper and I have come through much darkness
into much light."
" O Lord, help me, I pray, and bless me and give
186 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
me peace as Thou seest I have need. Help me more
and more to do Thy will. Help me to be a better man,
to have more courage for my work, to labour with all
my might. Thou art gracious in many things, Thou
wilt be more gracious yet."
" Give me strength, Lord, it is my prayer. Give me
a happy heart full of great joys in believing. In this
will I have glory continually. Amen."
From all of which it will be seen that his idea of
happiness was a combination of toil, sorrow, comfort,
battle, victory, pain and reward but most of all service
of God. He thought it pleasanter to be with God in
trouble than without Him in joy. He had long since
given himself away, now he could give those he loved :
" I was very busy all of last week attending Presby-
tery at Laurens. It was particularly interesting to me,
as during its progress Ferdie was ordained to the gospel
ministry. The same week States was examined and
will shortly be ordained pastor at Edgefield Court
House by the South Carolina Presbytery. Both my
boys will take their first seat in Synod in their old
home, Clinton. God be with them. I have two other
sons that I have given Thee, O Lord." . . .
'' Corn well Jennings, one of my orphan boys, was
also received. So two of my orphan boys are now in
process of manufacture as preachers of the Gospel."
And then later :
" It is very good indeed of my dear Lord to accept
Thorn well as a candidate for the ministry. My heart
is full. I have been grateful beyond expression that
my children have grown up in that faith. To train
them without a mother's tender care is no easy task,
especially when other such great causes have rested on
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 187
me. God be praised for His goodness to me in this
thing. It is in answer to prayer."
It was inevitable that, having given himself and all he
had away, there should come times when he needed much
help. Yet in all the thirty-two volumes of his closely
written diary, covering the whole long period from 1858-
1917 inclusive, there is no record of his ever offering a
prayer for his own advancement in glory or wealth.
But for others he was such a beggar as God loves.
And his theory of prayer was not one of beautiful coin-
cidences but of personal answer to definite appeal.
" I have another wonderful story to relate," he writes
in 1892. "Last evening I was greatly troubled over
our receipts for the support fund. We were $130
behind our receipts for March of last year and but a
few dollars received since ten days ago. Last night I
carried my trouble to God and I prayed in this way,—
' Lord, men say that there is no use to ask special
things of Thee and to set a special time ; they would
discourage even Thine elect from prayer. Lord, give
me a hundred dollars to-morrow and make our receipts
for this March equal those of last March. I do not
ask this. Lord, to test the power of prayer. Grant it,
and my poor faith will be made stronger. Refuse it,
and it will be all right, my Master. But, O Lord, for
Thy poor children's sake, refuse it not.' "
" The first letter received this morning contained a
one hundred dollar hill.
"Another wonderful coincidence? Not so, my
Master, there is no chance in this life. It is all law
and order."
This was an example worked out in dollars. We
turn to another worked out in souls.
188 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
" I earnestly prayed God a few months ago that the
result of my year's work, as it is the fiftieth of my life,
would be the addition of fifty members. Blessed be
His holy name. The prayer has been answered and
more than, fifty have been granted me. This is another
special and peculiar answer to prayer. This is the
first year in my ministry that I have received so many.
But God has answered so many of my prayers that I
know not how to remember with special and solitary
instances."
This story was written in December, 1891. The next
chapter was penned in January, 1893.
" On Friday night, the last night of Dr. Guerrant's
services, and before any one had expressed a purpose
to become a Christian, I suddenly remembered my
prayer of last year to God to give me fifty souls in
commemoration of my fiftieth anniversary. Then it
occurred to me to say, ^ Why not again now ? Is it too
much to ask ? Is the Lord's arm shortened that it
cannot save ? ' I remembered that twenty-four had thus
far been joined with us this year, and so I said to God
— ^ Lord, give me the other twenty -six to be added to
these.' Was it an accident that at the meeting of the
session yesterday morning just twenty-six were re-
ceived on profession of faith? Oh, Abraham, thou
mightest have saved all Sodom, hadst thou but dared
one more perad venture."
It is well to get his own mental attitude towards
these and similar incidents.
" How wonderful are God's dealings with my
church," he exclaims, " in the past year. We received
our sixtieth member yesterday and I think there will
be more next year. For two successive years this little
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 189
church is to be at the head of the roll for niembers
received in our Synod ! My pastorate is bringing forth
' fruit in old age.' Then how glad to be able to say
that no other church in our whole Southern Assembly
has so many candidates for the ministry as mine!
Blessed be my Master. It is hard to realize that this
is the little mission church of thirty years ago. Work
and the blessing of God and perseverance towards a
prescribed end have done it, but mainly the blessing of
God. I want every day to thank Him. He has made
my life a marvellous success, along the line I chose !
And I feel that He will be with me in all things till
Jesus comes."
We have here then a man who believed in prayer
very much as he believed in language and never dis-
counted it as the means of communication between
spirit and Spirit. Had some one referred to his answers
as beautiful coincidences he would doubtless have
smiled and suggested that it was just as difficult to
arrange beautiful coincidences as it is to answer prayers.
Really, what is the difference ?
Being convinced of this stupendous thing who that
knew him would not have known that sooner or later
he would turn his beautiful instrument, like a revealing
telescope, upon the stars. From the boyhood days to
the very end he had but one great passion, the longing
for the Eternal Life. But so much sweeter and deeper
are his own words that none others should obscure their
beauty :
" I can truly say that there is no earthly prospect
that I ever set for a moment over against the promised
glory. My desire for health and life is that I may do
God's will and advance His cause. Sometimes I feel
190 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
as if the promise of eternal life were too good to be
true, too wonderful, too soul thrilling ; and I am cast
down with fears that I may not inherit it, but I feel
sure of one thing, that my fears are born of an intense
yearning that the promises of the blessed book may be
realized in my case. Lord, give me surcease of these
useless fears, and best of all give me daily proof, as
Thou hast in the past, that Thou carest for me."
And next we find an astonishing thing. It was as if
a man with a newly discovered telescope were to turn
it for the first time on the abyss of space asking of
Neptune, '* Art thou there ? "
Did he long to know whether he should live again,
and would God answer prayer ? Then why not ask
Him?
" Three months ago I asked the Lord to assure me
of eternal life by doing four wonderful things for me.
First, to restore my health, and this He has so far done
that I seem to myself to be whole and well ; second,
to free the college of debt, and this also He has done
by removing every cent of indebtedness and leaving a
balance in the treasury ; third, by doing some wonder-
ful thing for the orphanage; His reply was to give
me $1,000 endowment, $350 for the clock and $3,000
for the Harriet Home, to give Our Monthly its largest
receipts and the whole orphanage work $14,000 ; fourth,
to bless my church in some special way and since then
He has had five of my young men (one, my own son)
enter the ministry (and He hasn't done yet !). It seems
to me that I have the clearest right to believe. First,
that God hears my prayers; second, that He has in
store for me eternal life, and greater privileges and
blessings than these can no man ask. As to the mercies
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 191
of this year, they are beyond measure. My heart
magnifies her Lord and makes her boast in Him ! ''
" I have been studying for two years the ministry of
prayer," he writes later. " Two years ago it was my
own life that seemed endangered and then how eagerly
I studied things about the hereafter. It was a problem
over which I fought — this problem of eternal life — and
the real presence of God with believers. I can truly say
that I gained much light but there was much yet to
learn. For three weeks, alas, I have been in constant
prayer for the life of the two girls, Lula and Maggie.
All was going against them and me, and I had an idea
half formed that I was not to be heard. I pled by
every thought I could conceive that God would help
me. And God did hear me. On the 26th the tide be-
gan to turn. But that day, suddenly, our little Ida
was cut down. The work was quickly done. I hardly
had time to cry 'Lord, spare my child!' But the
Lord had meant that child's death to be the great
lesson that I needed. She did not die, she was trans-
lated ! For while I sat by her, her little pale face lit
up with the radiance of heaven. * The angels have
come into this room,' she said. I turned involuntarily
to see them. * They are passing over to the side of my
bed, there by you. Oh, they are so beautiful, so beau-
tiful, and they have come for me ! ' How can I de-
scribe the sweet peace that rested on the child's face ?
It was seraphic. Moreover it impressed me so utterly
with the assurance of the reality of her vision that I
was astonished at the dullness of my vision. The
Master sent His shining ones to carry the little orphan
home, — His own little child.
" So the Lord has given me at last what I have long
192 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
been seeking for. I have not found it in my heart to
weep for little Ida though my tears have run in streams
as I have recalled that scene. Nothing in all my life
has so touched me. Henceforth, death will have been
shorn of much of its terror. The Angels of God have
stood by me, and lifted almost out of my arms their
little treasure."
And so we find him at the noontide hour a man who
loved other people — and especially God, and wanted to
spend his life serving them, because his eyes were fixed
on that far distant Why ? from which all philosophers
and philanthropists have drawn their inspiration. The
ultimate Goal of Things drew him from home to home
in his pastoral calls and as he went his dreams dwelt in
his words and his words won their sweet way into a
heart or two here and there.
It is not that church or that college or that orphan-
age or that town that He is interested in. It is that
spirit.
On the one side: safety, comfort, wealth, ease,
glory; on the other: danger, trouble, poverty, toil,
glory ; thus does the shepherd-rod of God continually
divide the sheep from the goats.
And in the heat of his midday burden, at the even
age of fifty years, he sits down to write — of himself,
his life, his experiences, his God. And this is what he
says:
" I am this day fifty years of age. I cease to-day to
climb the hill of life and start down the declivity. I
have passed the * dead line.' It is meet for me to pause
here and make a few reflections and resolutions.
" I am not going to look backward to-day. Often
have I done that in the past, measuring step by step
THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 193
the work and way the Master sent me. I look forward
and press on.
" I do not know how long I am to live. If it be to
fourscore or even fourscore and ten, every day of it
shall be spent in Thy service, O God. I am deter-
mined to know no rest till the end come.
" Every year I will begin new studies and undertake
new works. I may die this day, but if I do not die
till I am ninety, this I set to my seal, that I shall busy
myself about my Master's work while I have my being.
I may be in time laid aside from this or that sort of
duty,— God only knows,— yet will I find some sort, so
help me God and keep me steadfast.
" I find myself in fairly good condition physically
to-day. The next ten years I will choose to make a
better ten than those just behind me. Gray hairs are
coming fast. Let them come. I will not care. But I
must let in no droning, no whining.
'' Yet I look forward to a goal. To live eternally
with Christ is the unutterable longing of my soul !
There is no desire that I have that is for a moment
comparable with that. It is everything with me and
as the years fly past the longing grows stronger and
stronger. O God, all powerful ! in Thine own good
time grant me eternal life in Thy presence where there
are pleasures forevermore.
"To-day, on the 15th of March, we opened the
Nellie Scott Library and also threw out the foundation
dirt for the Technical School.
" I received some pleasant souvenirs of my fiftieth
birthday.
" Why should a man be counted old at fifty ? For
my part I feel that I can do better work than ever. I
194 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
notice that my imagination is not so brilliant, and that I
am not as fond of using illustrations as I once was, but
I prefer to hammer away at a given point till I get it
sharpened for use.
" Neither am I afraid ^ of that which is high.' My
plans increase and enlarge in number. There are
broader views to be taken of things and I love to take
them. I find myself desirous of impressing my views
upon large masses of men. Once I was content with
bringing my little church to think with me.
" Still, I love this little town. I am delighted to see
it grow and to know that I have given it two such in-
stitutions as the college and the orphanage. God has
enabled me to prove that a faithful worker in a village
church may make his little field a tower of strength to
all the state. Moreover, the faithful win honour. I
have no talent. I have only faithfulness and common
XVIII
BUILDIKG THE NEW CHUECH
Aye, like to him who trusting, cast his net
As One commanded forth into the deep,
"Wherein the master loves and yearnings sleep,
Wherewith the lines that lift the world are wet !
IN the mind of the minister there are few joys to
equal the building of a House for God.
When, far back in the sixties, the city youth
came to take up his work in the country village and
saw the bare walls of his unattractive building there
doubtless mingled with his sense of poverty a prayer
and determination to erect, some day, a fitting temple
for Jehovah. Just as we find him proposing to build a
cotton mill ten years before the business men of the
village took his advice, so from the beginning he
yearned for an efficient and suitable church building.
Yet there was that about the old church raising its
tall white spire so high as to overlook the beautiful oak
grove in front, that would not let it go without a pang
of grave regret. There, on July 13, 1862, the slight,
boyish seminary student had, as if by chance, preached
his first Clinton sermon. Thither he had come two
years later to be their first pastor and the only resident
minister of the only church in the village. Through
the long black night of reconstruction days they had
comforted one another in her pews and over old-
fashioned communion tables until the dawn came even
as the great book on the pulpit stand had promised.
195
196 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Thither also he had first led his little family of orphans,
then called " Jacobs' Folly," by day and by night, and
thither his first " college boys " had gathered when his
" college " was the joke of the state, and there they
had found faith of such a sort that they were not dis-
mayed. In that old wooden building great sermons
had been preached and hundreds upon hundreds of
souls converted, as the Power showed him how to take
ordinary folks and make ministers and missionaries and
professors and college presidents out of them, though
it had to be done in what was called when he came to
it: " The Hell-hole of South Carolina." So this little
forgotten and forsaken country church had come to
know and be known by all who loved high purpose
and fine resolve and its very poverty of adornment
emphasized its message. As the years passed over his
head the temples of the young minister whitened and
his eyes grew dim yet his youthful dream did not de-
part. He still craved that for which he had so long
prayed and kept talking about it.
So one day in 1895 a woman died and left seven
hundred dollars to " the new church."
The Ladies' Aid Society took it in charge and began
adding to it. The old story was to be told again —
faith—prayer— work. By 1899 he was writing in his
diary, " but the special year's work shall be for the new
church building."
So he began work and immediately found that to be
true which the chorus in Antigone sang many centuries
before :
'•'■ One law holds ever good,
That nothing comes to life of man on earth.
Unscathed throughout by woe."
BUILDING THE NEW CHURCH 197
For there were those who wanted to move the
church to another and, as they said, more central
location, and to this the other part would not hear.
" The new church will not be built in my time ! " he
exclaimed in dismay. In the Hotel Ingleterra, Habana,
on March 15, 1900, his fifty -eighth birthday, he writes
in his journal his surrender of the hope which he had
cherished for a long, long while and considered this
end of his life-dream a signal from above that the time
had come to resign his church.
And all the while at his little home town the Power
was working out His perfect plan. The ladies kept
adding dollar to dollar. The men could not forget that
picture he had drawn for them in stone. Soon the
differences were amicably composed and on March
6, 1901, the first stone was laid in the foundation of
the new church.
" I am a boy yet ! " he exclaimed on the day he was
fifty-nine. " I will make this my best year ! "
And he just about did it. His little country church
that was, now began to feel its power. They actually
gave $2,000 for all regular causes during that year and
$3,000 to the new church, the best year in its history !
And the following July, as if to remind him of the
favour God had shown him, Miss Ibby Fulton, the last
of the original members of his church, died at the age
of ninety-four years. For himself he had just taken
his first ride in an automobile and was saying, " It is
very hard to make this young heart and old body of
mine keep step with each other."
Three more long years were consumed in building
that church and as regularly as the days passed the
form of an old man now often tired and noticeably
198 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
gray was seen each afternoon passing in and out
among the workmen, worrying over every detail and
correcting anything that he found wrong. Dollar by
dollar they raised the money to rear its granite walls
and provide its oaken seats and at last it was ready for
the meeting of the Synod of South Carolina in the fall
of 1904.
It had taken nine years of active propaganda to do
it and five years of hard toil and a whole lifetime of
dreaming — which made it all the more meaningful
and precious.
Then three more years passed and at last he wrote
in his diary :
" By God's good grace we dedicated our church to-
day. The total cost, including everything, was $21,-
000. There remains $34 in the treasury ! The day
was ideal ; the congregation crowded the church and
schoolroom. Cornelson's sermon was good. And
God has given me to-day the last one of my ' condi-
tions ' on which I based my purpose to remain as a
pastor.
" 1st. The church debt was paid.
" 2d. The money for a mill pastor secured.
" 3d. A church membership raised to four hundred.
" 4th. My salary better paid.
"5th. Four hundred actually present at Sunday
School.
" There were four hundred and sixteen (!) at Sunday
School to-day."
All his life long he pra37^ed and worked and then
watched to see what would happen. ISTow beautiful
things always happen under such circumstances. But
does their beauty lie in the coincidence of request and
BUILDING THE NEW CHURCH 199
reply or in the object and the eye ? Is the wonderful
element in it the actual fact of answer or the ability to
see that fact ? What does it matter how many prayers
God answers if nobody sees Him do it ? A great
author once said of his manuscript, '* It may well wait
a century for a reader as God has waited six thousand
years for an observer ! " This power to see God ; to
know Him ; to glorify Him ; to enjoy Him, is this not
indeed the chief end of man ?
Viewing this remarkable life that we have been
studying, what finer truth may we say of it than that
it was his delight to look for God.
And with the practised eye of the scout-master he
discovered His familiar footprint in the forest of human
affairs.
This was his glory that having a pure heart he saw
God.
XIX
IN THE LATEE YEAES
Ah, little brook, thy waves and mine
Break ever towards the open sea,
Nor stone may bar, nor meadowed kine
A hindrance be.
We beachward bear our portioned sand,
The boom of breakers in our ear,
O Harbour of the Fatherland,
He waits us, There.
THAT is indeed a singular law under which
each generation raises monuments to the
prophets of the past and crosses for those of
the present, yet it has been followed by each age from
the beginning. And the same spirit of hypocrisy is
responsible in the one case as in the other. The leader
inevitably calls down the curses of the blind upon his
head. ]S'ot being able to see so far as he, they account
his dreams as follies and his faiths as fictions. After-
wards when these have been wrought out in stone and
mortar, in facts and successes, another generation
gathers up the stones thrown at him and builds a monu-
ment over his grave. When the new leader comes who
sees still ^further he receives the same treatment, first
persecution then apotheosis. It is a habit of civiliza-
tion.
With William Plumer Jacobs the days of persecu-
tion had passed and those of honour and emolument
had come. He feared these far more than the former
200
IN THE LATER YEARS 201
years of insignificance and mockery though he wel-
comed the power and influence they brought and pro-
ceeded to coin them for his orphans. The little band
of admirers he had in the beginning had grown to a
great host of true friends. Once in the early years, a
distinguished Doctor of Divinity, pastor of one of the
large and wealthy churches of South Carolina, was
jesting at Synod over *' little Willie Jacobs' orphan
house " which he was at that time beginning when a
bystander said, " Doctor, you're the famous pastor of a
great church now but that ' orphan house ' will pre-
serve his memory long after you've been forgotten ! "
In Clinton, during the early days, among his own sup-
porters and friends was a wealthy scoffer whose son
and daughter were later cared for by the orphanage
their father had fought. And in a neighbouring town
the man who had published in his paper the attacks
and accusations of '79 was preparing to write a $5,000
legacy into his will for the orphanage, because a rela-
tive had received its help to such admirable advantage.
Thus was wisdom being justified of her children.
Yet even the wisdom of the older man went not
without question among the brethren. In 1895 he
writes that " We offered our college to the Synod and
were refused. Yery fickle is the favour of princes and
Sjmods 1 " He loved them, but, for help, he preferred
God. And his preference was well founded, for won-
derful things kept happening ; " beautiful coincidences "
following earnest supplication. In December of the
same year, Mrs. McCormick gave $5,000 for the Edith
Home, a memorial to her daughter. In April Mrs.
Lees gave $2,500 to beautify and remodel the first
building which now became the Lees' Home of Peace.
202 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMEE JACOBS
" I have never asked God for anything but that He
gave it to me ! " he exclaimed.
The following year his two sons, Ferdinand and
States, bought the Southern Fresh ytei'ian^ thus delight-
ing his heart by increasing the prospect of its remain-
ing in Clinton permanently. In May of '99 he located
Eiverside Cottage on the Enoree where for the follow-
ing sixteen summers he was to spend many happy vaca-
tion hours with his children. That June the Virginia
Home was progressing and the corner-stone of the Anita
Home was laid, both gifts of Mrs. McCormick and both
named for her daughters. And then when the year
closed he found that God had given him seventy-five
additions to his church, the most fruitful year of his
ministry, to date, combining this spiritual blessing with
the two new buildings at the orphanage, several gifts
to the endowment fund, and the starting of his new
church. Only the college failed to prosper, waiting for
a turn of the tide. His health also troubled him, his
voice having failed again but " I find that when I do
my duty the Lord accepts it all the same," he notes,
cheerily. The burden of building the new church bore
heavily on him during this and the three succeeding
j^ears. He constantly hoped to preach his first sermon
in it on the fortieth anniversary of his first sermon in
Clinton (July 13, 1862). At the spring meeting of
Presbytery he had the pleasure of introducing four of
his orphan boys as candidates for the ministry.
The following year (1902) Mrs. Lees died, leaving
$10,000 to the orphanage. This was the largest sum
ever received up to that date. And then, on the
thirtieth anniversary of his resolve to found the or-
phanage, Henry K. McHarg, learning of the work
IN THE LATER YEARS 203
through Judge A. A. Phlegar, a long time friend, gave
$25,000 to the endowment! This, combined with
other sums, made a thousand dollars for each year and
as much as had been given to the endowment in all the
previous thirty years ! It was a great way to celebrate
a courageous resolution of an unknown village minister.
He who seeth in secret was rewarding openlj^
The following year saw the same steady progress.
It was also a year of travel and one of intense sorrow.
During a trip to the U. S. A. Assembly at Los Angeles,
one of his orphanage daughters was accidentally killed
by an explosion in the steam laundry. The news of it
was in the first letter he received on his arrival at the
Assembly and he immediately left, too sad to take
further part in the great gathering. The record of his
sorrow in his journal tells how " Even the children on
the train grew silent with wonder at the old man with
tears running down his cheeks " as his train sped home-
ward.
In June he saw New York again and Northfield and
New England, on a trip to perform the wedding cere-
mony of his youngest son, at that time his assistant in
the orphanage, to Miss Maud Lesh of Newton Center,
Massachusetts. His next trip was to the St. Louis Ex-
position the following year. Then came the singular
catastrophe of two fires, the only two serious ones
during his whole lifetime at the orphanage, one destroy-
ing Memorial Hall and the other the " Seminary," or
Academic Building, both occurring tlie same month
and within nineteen days of each other. But as they
burned the sparks flew over the wires, and the hearts
of the thousands of friends of Thornwell were fired
also, so that soon Memorial Hall was built anew and a
204 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
more beautiful church took the place of the seminary.
Such was the depth of the love they two had built in
the hearts of their friends.
The following year, 1905, he was enabled to begin
another building, the Georgia Home, built by Georgia
friends, of Georgia brick and Georgia lumber, trimmed
with Georgia marble, used by Georgia boys, and being
a little piece of Georgia set down in Georgia love on
the Thornwell Campus. While this was happening he
was turning over to others the further control of the
destinies of his college. The following Sunday he
chose as his text, " I have loved Thee with an everlast-
ing love." It hurt him greatly to think this severance
was wise, and he wondered whether his resignation of
the church should not follow.
The beginning of 1906 found him in Miami and
when he returned the workmen began tearing down
the old church building in which he had preached over
forty years. Before the year had ended two good gifts
came to him, one the McCall legacy enabling him to
buy the old college building for his own Academic
Hall, and the other assuring him of a new home for
his orphans, the Silliman Cottage. His church also
kept growing steadily, the morning services averaging
over five hundred.
So the years passed, each being a record of progress,
of prayers, and of blessed purposes fulfilled. The
HoUingsworth Home and the Florida Cottage were the
gifts of 1910, and in 1911 came the famous trip to
Atlanta on which the entire orphanage went to take
part in the Presbyterian Jubilee and give their many
Atlanta friends an opportunity to see the children face
to face. Of this journey he wrote :
IN THE LATER YEARS 205
"A very remarkable thing has happened. The
orphanage has been transferred bodily. Herein is the
mystery of modern enterprise ! Great ! It took, how-
ever, great preparation to get things straight. Matrons
and children were all busy. And on Saturday (yester-
day) morning we brought 240 of the household over on
the Seaboard Air Line. A great crowd met them at
the Atlanta Station. Five carloads of children poured
out into the arms of their friends. It was a day of
days ! Fifty-two automobiles were there and in a very
few minutes they were loaded with a happy, merry,
joyous crowd and whirled out through Atlanta to
Mr. J. H. Honours', miles into the country. There
they had a splendid lunch tendered them, which they
enjoyed to the full, and were thence distributed to
their friends and to the sights of Atlanta. My resting-
place was with Thornwell, whither I was taken by
Mrs. Honour. Thornwell gave a reception that night
— a supper. Dr. Burrell was there, who is to preach
to-day, and my good friends Mr. Sam Inman, John
Egan, Frank Inman, J. K. Orr, J. K. Ottley, Professor
Matheson (President of the Tech), and others, and we
sat up till 11 : 45. To-day I spent at the Central
Church and Sunday School, and preached at the
North Avenue Church to-night. . . .
". . . Well, we reached home last eve after a
famous journey. We will never forget it. The
Charleston trip of 1902 was a great one but the
Atlanta trip was a greater, for our dear orphans were
made much of in what was the greatest gathering of
Presbyterians in the South. They occupied the plat-
form (amazing thing !), they furnished most of the
music, singing one piece alone. Thornwell certainly
206 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
arranged a fine program. I enjoyed Dr. Burrell's
sermon greatly. I was on the platform and had the
honour of pronouncing the benediction.
". . . In the afternoon we gathered for a special
orphanage event in the Central Presbyterian Church,
with nearly two thousand people present. The orphans
filled the center tier of seats and their choir was the
choir of the occasion. I conducted the exercises, draw-
ing them out in Scripture passages and songs, and I
gave the people the story of the founding of the or-
phanage. After the services we had a regular ovation,
and not least of those who came up to give a loving
grip were the old girls — Mary, Bessie, Lucy Feebeck,
Jim Moffett (I hadn't heard of him for twenty years),
Walter Chamblee, Lillian Nelson, and dear Cassie
Oliver, Louise Happoldt, Kate Upchurch, Ella Harper,
and yet others. God bless them. It was a day to be
remembered in heaven. . . .
". . . The return trip was great. What a meet-
ing we had in the waiting room a.t the S. A. L. in
Atlanta— the singing— Dr. Holderby's prayer— the Ra,
Ra, Ra's— and on the train, Conductor Seal decorated
to the point of agony. Well, it is over, but the in-
fluence will long continue with the little folks."
His eyes gave him increasing anxiety, but he kept
praying for fifty souls during that year and received
sixty. "I shall have to find some way of working
without eyes or ears," he exclaimed, " but it will be a
fight. I believe in fighting to the end ! " The follow-
ing year was made notable by the meeting of the
Synod in his church. He was elected moderator and
immediately resigned, being unable either to hear or
see.
IN THE LATER YEARS 207
But neither prevented 1912 from being a notable
year in the life of the orphanage. Beautiful among
the days of that year was the one on which Mrs. J. H.
Lesh gave the Lesh Infirmary where little orphan
sufferers could be nursed back to life and health again.
The Sam Jones Cottage, the Sherrard Cottage, and the
Florida made the year a blessed one also. These all
were being built or about to be begun on April 14th,
that fateful Sabbath morning of the sinking of the
Titanic. In the following May, on the memorable
28th, he assisted in installing his successor, Rev. Frank
Dudley Jones, as pastor of his church, the story of
which is reserved for later mention. The following
year (1913) found him busy building the Lesh Infirmary,
the Florida Cottage, and the Tom Jones Memorial
Museum. The reader pauses as he notes this last to
reflect upon the picture he recalls of a little boy in
Charleston wandering through the aisles of the Museum
there. He had gotten it at last !
In May, 1913, he was present at the great Pan
Presbyterian Pentecost in Atlanta, opening the first
union mass meeting of the four assemblies with prayer,
meeting literally thousands of his friends and adding
the blessing of his presence to that great gathering.
The year of the first World War came to injure his
receipts and raised the cost of living for his three hun-
dred children. It was the beginning of the last scene
of his life drama. During a great war he had come to
Clinton, and during a great war he was to leave^, yet
his faith shone out with the needed brightness. He
immediately asked God for a notable gift during 1914
to bear witness of His continual and increasing love.
Instantaneously the answer came but he knew it not.
208 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
A letter brought the announcement that a lady in
Georgia had left ^10,000 to the Synod of Georgia to
found an orphanage in that state, and should the Synod
not find the way clear so to do the entire sum was to
go to Thornwell. All during the following year he
kept worrying over this beautiful thing that God was
MA? OF
CUNTON,S.C
The Clinton of 1913.
doing for him. Was he about to lose the support of
the generous hearted Synod of Georgia without whose
help he saw no way to continue his orphan work on the
present scale ! He had asked for a notable gift and had
received a notable calamity. So, at least, it seemed to
him who did not know how the Synod of Georgia would
decline to found another orphanage, loving Thornwell
too well to subtract from her support. Thus a whole
m THE LATER YEARS
209
state was to endorse the gift with her love. Down to
Florida he was driven to heal the hacking cough that
had seized him. *' I am coughing all the time," he
wrote, " but I am also thanking God for His good-
ness I " The death on July 12th of his adopted daugh-
ter, Mollie, saddened him greatly. He had not for-
gotten how his own mother had been adopted by the
sainted Dr. Wm. S. Plumer, his own name bearing wit-
ness to it. Taken by and large it was a sad year and
trying. A beautiful chapter in it was his presence in
Atlanta on January 21, 1915, at the laying of the
corner-stone of Oglethorpe University, taking part in
the exercises and adding his blessing to that memorable
occasion.
This institution, Oglethorpe University, might almost
be spoken of as another school of his founding, for it
was born of his spirit of service and faith and passed
through the same dark hour of abuse and attack.
Founded originally in the thirties of the eighteenth
century, for many years it had done its great work
numbering LeConte, and Talmadge and Woodrow as
well as his own father, among its teachers, and a host
of able men among its alumni, including Sidney Lanier
one of the seven immortals of American literature!
Destroyed by the war between the states, for a half
century It had slept beneath the gray ashes of fratri-
cidal strife until the work of refounding it was begun
by his youngest son in Atlanta, that it might become
the great Southern Presbyterian University, drawing
Its support and resources from and distributing its
blessings to the whole South and nation. He saw in it
no danger of rivalry to his own college but quickly
gave It his money, his prayers and his support. It
210 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
took him far back into tlie past when he read the at-
tacks made upon the infancy of this great enterprise.
Having himself learned not to fear any form of eccle-
siastical politics or institutional jealousy, he wrote to
its young president not to be afraid and recalled, as if
it had now become a blessed memory, the calumnies
and slander that were once his portion. In Our
Monthly (October, 1916) he set forth his own spirit of
rivalry in kindness rather than jealousy, thus :
" We had the pleasure quite recently of being in a
very great and wonderful audience of Presbyterian
people. Over five thousand were present. The meet-
ing was held in the Auditorium of Atlanta. It was an
outpouring of the great Presbyterian forces in the most
Presbyterian city in the South. Their purpose was to
thank God for the opening of Oglethorpe University.
Two hours were spent in exercises suited to the occa-
sion. The President of the United States honoured the
assembly with a special telegraphic message. The
Mayor of the great city of Atlanta, himself the founder
of a great university, was present and addressed the
body. Our own theological seminary in Columbia,
through its president, Dr. Whaling, brought greet-
ings. Oglethorpe will become a feeder of this semi-
nary. If those who kick at this institution had been
present they would certainly have halted before they
gave another kick. One cannot easily kick down a
mountain. The Oglethorpe movement is growing. Its
plans are magnificently beautiful. Its success is com-
mensurate with the hopes of the founders. That it is
to succeed is sure. Atlanta is behind the movement.
Its people are gratified with the beginning of things.
You will hear more of Oglethorpe.
IN THE LATEK YEARS 211
" While in private conversation the president of
Oglethorpe said that he regarded the Emory Uni-
versity as one of their greatest assets. It would help
make of Atlanta a university city. It would naturally
attract a large body of the finest men of the South to
it, and would give to Oglethorpe a stronger hold on
Presbyterian patronage. Hearing these things led us
to think how utterly short sighted is institutional jeal-
ousy. When Thorn well Orphanage was founded it had
the whole Southern Church at its back. Very naturally
when another orphanage was started it cut off many
interested friends from the number of its subscribers.
The president of Thorn well felt for a little while that
it was a pity the field should be divided. He knows
better now. The fellowship and companionship of
other institutions has given Thornwell a warmer place
in the hearts of its patrons while the growth of the
church has increased the number of its patrons many
fold. As to the orphans, they are reaping the benefit.
Every Synod in the South now has its institution either
singly or in copartnership. A few churches and Sab-
bath schools in other than our own field still stand by
Thornwell. Children come to us from at least ten dif-
ferent Synods. We get no help from beyond the
waters but we do get* help from almost every state in
the Union. This is only a relic of our ancient inher-
itance, but we believe it is the blessing of God upon the
fact that those who love and maintain the Thornwell
Orphanage have laid aside from their hearts jealousy
of others. Institutions under the care of our Almighty
Father cannot die. He will not let them live if they
chei'ish malice^ or hatred^ or jealousy toioards other
ivorhers in His own field. This is the meaning of the
212 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Master's saying ' Forbid them not ; he that is not
against us is for us.'"
This was one reason why he was so universally
loved: no jealousy, no pulling of the wires of ec-
clesiastical politics, no packing of Presbyteries or As-
semblies to carry action adverse to a rival ; instead, a
definite refusal to have a rival because of a great, gen-
erous heart that wanted to help, not to surpass his
brother. Is it any wonder that, immediately upon his
death, a fund was started at Oglethorpe to build a
memorial to him into the life of the University of
whose board of directors he had become a member.
Thus shall it ever be done unto the man whom the
King delighteth to honour.
The following year saw the ending of many familiar
companionships. "I find that I cannot see now to
read at all," he wrote, " but I can preach. I did it
twice to-day ! " The last entry of his journal in his
own handwriting is on November 14th. ^' Nearly
blind," he records laconically. Afterwards came the
operation for cataract on one of the two eyes they
had dimmed, which was followed in turn by eight
weeks of anxious watching for light that was not to
come.
Through the story of these eventful years runs the
golden thread of the Great Discovery. No pen may
describe these happenings so well as his own, found
here and there in his diary written in fresh and glow-
ing words as he stood in the presence of the event
itself. While they are of the same sort as the others
elsewhere found in this story and are set dovm as only
selected samples of many similar occurrences they form
tb© ohi^f valtt© of all the outward triumphs ol wbioh
William P. Jacobs at various ages
IN THE LATER YEARS 2l8
they are the interpretations. Here are some of tiie
more astonishing.
" Notwithstanding the pleasant absence from home
and neglect of office work, and notwithstanding the
heavy increase that I had in our receipts for the past
four months, I find that already we are beyond $1,000
for this month and I still hope for a little increase.
The exact prayer I offered was for $1,000 anyway, and
for $1,200 if the Lord could give it. He has sent me
$1,050 for support, $62 for machinery, $50 for furni-
ture, making a total of $1,162, and one day yet to hear
from. (Before Saturday ended I had received the
$1,200.)
*' Last month I asked the Lord for $1,200. He gave
me $1,226. I have again to thank God for having, in
a very peculiar manner, answered my prayers and such
prayers that it seemed to me the direct result w^as this
answer. I asked $888. He gave me, reserving the
answer to the last moment, $913. The circumstances
were such that this could not have been accidental.
God's hand was in it and no other. I am satisfied.
" Three days ago I asked the Lord to cheer me with
some large gift for endowment, and to put it then in
some one's heart to give it. To-day I received the gift
from a new source of $500 for the endowment ! On
the first day of June I asked for $900 this month for
the support fund. I have already received it !
" God has already given me all I asked for July and
more. It is wonderful how this blessed Lord remem-
bers. He keeps me under the shadow of His wing.
My prayers are utterly worthless as literary produc-
tions. I just go to God and say, * Lord, give me $1,067
for this month,' and He gives me $1,167. That is all
214 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
there is of it. I always fix my request for more than
I need and I always have given me more than I ask
I rejoice in the Lord. I glory in His holy name. I
received $10.04 to-day. I received $86.25 yesterday.
So it comes, in sums great or small.
'' On June 14th I prayed (see date) for $1,000 from
some source for this cause. On July 14th, I received
it ! Well, God is good, and this is a wonderful way
that He has. Of course it was all ^ accident.' Bosh !
How can so many accidents happen ? I have had thou-
sands of these ' accidents ' in my experience. Some-
how or other they make me very happy. When I
think about them I think of the almighty love that
grants our accidents.
" The Lord answered a prayer for me yesterday that
I had forgotten I had offered. Three weeks ago I
asked that before February ended He would make the
cash in hand $1,000, as we needed that to pay for the
land we are about to buy. Yesterday He sent me the
little balance of $G5 needed to fill out the amount.
How good God is !
" On the morning of the 19th I earnestly prayed
God to send me through Mrs. McCormick $500 more
for the Gordon Cottage. At that same hour she mailed
a check to me for $500 for that purpose. I had not
written to her for a month.
" I wonder if it would be possible for the dear Lord
to give me $1,800 this month.
" I want to thank God for His goodness in showing
me that it is possible to give me $1,800 I asked for and
$98 besides, and that over and above all receipts from
endowment this year set apart to a definite purpose.
" The Lord's name is to be praised. This morning I
IN THE LATER YEARS 215
had $1,500 in hand for the support fund. I was saying
to myself — for ouce is my boasting vain ! Alas, the
Lord is rebuking the vain glory of His servant. When
my mail came in it helped me wonderfully. There was
a single check for $400 and others that brought me
nearly to $2,300. Then there was a tap on the door.
A young man asked to see me privately and handed me
$300 ! I had received my $2,500— more than that. I
had $175 returned to another fund that I had borrowed
from to make out my $1,500. I turned over to the
treasurer $2,675. In a single day I had received $1,175
as against $l,5uO for twenty-nine days preceding. How
wonderfullj^ God has helped ! He has always shown
Himself to be marvellous in mercies. I rejoice in Him.
But this is not all. I had asked the dear Lord that He
would have the McOall legacy, which goes to our per-
manent fund, paid also. It came in promptly. It is
with this sum that we will be able, if it is so deter-
mined, to purchase the old college building. So with
this last day of Novem.ber I am glad of heart. We
had a fine gathering at the Thanksgiving service.
Neville preached.
" Well, the Lord has dealt bountifully with me. He
gave me the $2,500 I pleaded for. We closed the
month with $4,300 in the treasury. It is a most myste-
rious thing He is doing in and through and for me. My
heart is glad in Him. This year is a 3^ear of mercies.
" I want to thank God out of my whole heart for His
most gracious answer to my prayer. He has sent me up
to this moment $6,175 for the support fund. I prayed
for $6,000 most earnestly. He has answered me with a
large and liberal hand. Oh, how good God is ! He
certainly is good to me. I glory in His name. He
216 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
will do all things right and best. I also received ;^700
on the endowment, and ^200 on the Georgia cottage
fund, and ;^200 on other funds. In all ;$1 2,000 came
into my hands. I understand that the college received
a gift of ^3,000.
" I earnestly desired ^2,000 this month. I prayed
and laboured for ^$1,500 and I got just exactly that. I
wish I had faith to believe that I could get ^2,000 in
June, but I fear my faith is not sufficient. I will pray
for ;^2,000 but confidently expect ^1,500.
*' God is dealing kindly with me and is giving me
the ;$2,000. It is simply w^onderful. I had no hope of
getting this sum. It has just come streaming in.
" I thank God for ^2,000 in June for the orphanage I
He hath heard my prayer. Last year the June re-
ceipts were ;^1,346.
" The Lord marvellously answered one of my prayers
yesterday, bringing to me a gift of ^300 not only from
the man I asked Him to move, and for the very sum 1
asked, but at the very time of the prayer. Incidentally
this answer to prayer will bring the answer to yet an-
other, for it will result in giving me this month the sum
of money for which I petitioned our bountiful Bene-
factor.
" I found to my surprise and delight that the Lord
had given me all I asked for and ^10 more. I asked
Him for $2,222. He gave me $2,232, for which I most
gratefully thank Him. My heart is glad when I think
how grandly He serves me. Why did I fix that singu-
lar sum ? — just because I asked Him to give me a living
proof that His answer to my prayer was a living proof
of His presence and not an accident.
" As it has been a good while since I had made re-
m THE LATER YEARS 217
ceipt of any large gift, I asked the Lord on Tuesday
last to give to the support fund ^100, or more, in one
gift before Saturday, and in such way as He thought
best. He sent me on Friday twenty barrels of flour
worth ^100, or more,— the most acceptable gift, and in
the most acceptable way in which He could have sent
it ! I asked Him to do this to evidence His loving care
over the orphans. Under all the circumstances I am
sure this was a miracle. I do not know who the donor
was. It is God's gift, pure and simple."
As we read this amazing record we begin to under-
stand his own comment on the way God answered his
prayers. " He always does," he writes. " It is very
wonderful."
XX
MOVING HIS COLLEGE
As if it were a precious thing to this then hold thou fast ;
"Who wrote the first line of thy life will also write the last.
And if the final chapter leaves thee lonely in thy loss,
Yet know, His was the greatest life who bore the greatest cross.
THE supreme law of God is to learn the truth,
to love it, to follow it, to worship it and it
only. And though intellects differ both in
form and content, producing different beliefs and con-
victions, fear not. For all are true, there is no discord
to those who know the key to the harmony. And to
God each is alike good if only the supreme love be for
the truth, and the supreme gift of unselfish devotion to
it be given.
One must go back a long way to appreciate the pang
of terror which struck the heart of Wm. P. Jacobs
when he learned that there was a movement on foot to
move his college from Clinton to some other point in
South Carolina. His college represented that part of
his life which laboured in pure truth and was his con-
tribution to the intellectual life of his church and com-
munity. It was practically the same thing as to propose
to take away his son or his daughter or anything he
loved devotedly. He had made that college by toil
and prayer. Under the blessing of God he had
brought it up out of nothingness, while men laughed
218
MOVING HIS COLLEGE 219
at him for trying. Furthermore, to move it from Clin-
ton was to mar the lesson his life had taught " that a
little country church could be made a tower of light
and strength." His orphanage was the light of philan-
thropy, his college of philosophy, as his church of re-
ligion, and was it not as philosopher, philanthropist
and preacher that he wished to be remembered ?
Any one who had seen him nurse the little high
school into a college for the sake of teaching this lesson
would know at once that to remove the college any-
where was robbery.
But the contest came on ; for other towns, once the
matter had been mentioned, had offered handsome
bonuses and there seemed much to be gained for the
school in the eyes of those who favoured it. Great
sums had been raised in sister towns and many advan-
tages offered. Of course there was hot local opposition
to the scheme and the founder and quarter-century
president of its Board of Trustees protested, but all to
no avail. Whether or no, the thing must be done.
" I have found out that the Presbyterian Church is
ungrateful," he writes in June, 1905, " after the manner
of other republics. Our college is to be taken from us
by the Board of Trustees, that we ourselves provided
for. It is a shameful thing and one that makes me
hang my head. I resigned my presidency of the
Board after all these twenty-five years of service and
received in return not one word of kind commenda-
tion, not one syllable of regret, not one expression of
encouragement ; but as pay for all my services only the
throwing open the sale of the college to the highest
bidder.
" The college will continue here next year and then
220 THE LIFE OP WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
it leaves us. What will I do ? I have already decided
that our college association will take steps to continue
Clinton College. We will claim for it the history of
the past. Our session will open in 1907. It will be
our twenty-seventh year. We will find a man equal to
the task of reorganization. For once, our dependence
is on the Lord."
Yet this was a new and untried field of dependence
on Him and it remained to be seen whether his trust
would be in vain.
" My trust is in the Lord," he writes. " He is doing,
He always has done the thing for me that was best. I
trust Him out of a full heart." . . .
" . . . Well, this also is decided, that if the col-
lege is moved to Chester, or Anderson, or anywhere
else it will leave Clinton College behind. Lord, keep
Thou Thy hand upon this move and guide for the best."
If he really meant that, he was to have a strangely
beautiful experience. For of one thing those may be
sure who know all about God ; that they know nothing
at all about Him. He is always different though He
be always the same. It seems to be His delight, if one
may so speak, to be found faithful in new ways and to
beautify His providences by variety of incident.
For lo, a strange thing happened, even that for
which the founder of the college for years had prayed.
It was as if God had answered his prayers for his or-
phanage one by one as offered and had now determined
to answer those for his college all in a heap.
*' A wonderful thing has happened," he exclaimed.
*' Clinton has actually subscribed ^$10,000 for the college.
It will probably be increased to ;^1 5,000 and it may go
to ;^25,000. I earnestly hope so. This looks as if
MOVING HIS COLLEGE 221
Clinton were going to keep the college ! Still there is
no telling Avhat prejudices may do. Clinton (et ego
ipse) has some cordial enemies. Still it is easy to see
what we can do, if it is determined that Clinton College
shall continue."
But the Power was not yet done. The Board of
Management must be changed. Clinton should no
longer control the college. The Presbvterians of the
state must do that. Then at any time the college
could be done with as they pleased. It was to become
the property of other people than Clintonians. The
Presbyterians of the state were to own it. They,
therefore, should settle its location. If they wanted it
elsewhere let them move it. All this was a bitter pill
to one who was praying earnestly against it.
"The college will be bid for by Yorkville, Chester,
Bennettsville, Sumter," he notes, " and possibly Ander-
son. So much rancour has been developed here that the
Board will doubtless move it anyway. Clinton is a
house divided against itself. ^ Our leaders ' are new
men and we old friends are set aside severely. It is
my policy to sit still. I am for peace, but when I
speak they are for war. So I won't speak."
" The very close future seems to reveal me as doing
the resigning act. I must give the church a new pastor.
My life henceforth narrows to the orphanage and to my
family. I will not resign in a storm. I want every-
thmg to be peaceful and full of good will when I step
down and out."
So the harder he prayed the worse it got. Yet if he
had taken down a very old book in his library he
could have read the gtory of St. Augustine and his
Mother Monioa who pmyicl with all thi tmdev ©mo-
222 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
tions of a mother's heart that her young son might be
spared the temptation of voluptuous Rome and kept
from its polluting touch. Yet God against her suppli-
cations let him go directly there. But imagine her de-
light when he met there St. Ambrose of Milan and by
him was taught to love God. Thus her petition was
denied but her prayer was answered.
It is an old way of His and one easily forgotten.
" I think we might as well stop saying ' If the college
is moved.' It is now — 'When the college is moved.'
If Columbia decides to bid for it, or Anderson, to one
or the other it will go. And Anderson is going to
bid." So he feels in September, 1905.
But on one thing he had not reckoned, the effect of
forty years of high thinking and noble example and
earnest preaching in a community of Scotch-Irish
people. Clinton was now aroused. If Bennettsville
could bid, why not they ? Who was this Columbia
that would take away their child ? And the little vil-
lage soon found some of its reserve strength. It seemed
impossible but it was happening. This hopeless dere-
lict of forty years ago was now bidding for its college
against the wealthiest and most cultured centers of the
state. Was God trying to say anything to him in that
fact, something of encouragement and praise ? Who
had wrought this transformation but he, through
God?
"The Clinton people have, with great enthusiasm,
subscribed ^20,000 to secure the college, in addition to
^20,000 of other property." . . .
"... But Bennettsville has raised ^20,000 more."
"... I will wait and see."
So he stood still m^ 3a w the salvation of God, and
MOVING HIS COLLEGE 223
a new chapter was added to his interpretation of Divine
Providence, as Euripides said long ago :
** What else is wisdom, what of man^s endeavour,
Of God's high grace, so lovely and so great?
To stand, from fear set free, to breathe and wait,
To hold a hand uplifted over hate,
Shall not such loveliness be loved forever ? ''
Then came the denouement ; he wrote it thus :
" Well, thank God, the college matter is settled and
settled right. Clinton rose up in her strength and
resolved that she would have the college. Thirty or
more of us went down to Columbia on Thursday. The
Board met at eight o'clock in the seminary chapel.
Each of the five towns competing for the cause was
heard. Kev. Mr. Parrott spoke for the Clinton delega-
tion. He certainly fired up finely. The old chapel
heard more applause than it ever heard before. The
whole meeting was a grand one. Eennettsville, York-
viile, Sumter, and Chester were all competing for the
prize. All the next day the Board was in session. At
7 P. M. Clinton won out and the vote was made unani-
mous. I thank God. There was a regular love feast.
All of us made up with each other, and now the one
great idea is to make the college a most worthy and noble
institution. I left Columbia at 1 A. M. and reached
home at 5 a. m., tired and sleepy. The town has
coA^ered itself with glory. ^ My'' college is noio the
staters college — and I am proud! I trusted everything
to God and triumphed. God bless and prosper the
college ! Clinton is having great times over her
224 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Truly it was as the ancient chorus sang :
'* There be many shapes of mystery
And many things God makes to be,
Past hope and fear ;
And the end men looked for cometh not ;
And a path is there where no man thought j
So hath it happened here ! "
XXI
GIVING UP THE CHUECH
Do you hear the sound of Fall in the wind ?
Do you mark the fear of the leaf ?
Do you feel the kiss of the mist ? Do you mind
The brown of the shock and the sheaf ?
Go gather all thy harvests home ;
The cold will come !
IN every well-ordered life there is the great desire.
It is the string binding together all the beads of
victory. It is the goal towards which our foot-
steps turn, light with joy, weary with woe.
And as Phaedra said centuries ago :
** Some grow too soon weary and some swerve
To other paths, setting before the Eight,
The diverse, far-off image of Delight."
It was not so with the youth who was shunted off
by Providence into the little hope of a place called
Clinton. He had many dreams but one was more
recurrent than the rest. He had many intentions but
of them all one was the most insistent. He wanted to
preach. It was his joy. He really counted it a privi-
lege. All that he was and wanted to be found ex-
pression in it. The preacher's dressy long coat, white
tie, stiff collar, black shoes and hat — these symbols of
his office he took to naturally nor ever willingly
changed them. He looked his part. Games such as
225
226 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
tennis, golf, baseball, football, be neitber played nor
took deligbt in. Time was too precious, days too
sbort.
So wben be found an obscure crossroads town, witb-
out otber cburcb or minister, bimself being tbe pastor
of all, be was satisfied. Wben, on tbe day be preacbed
bis first sermon tbere, a man was found killed in front
of bis cburcb, tbe place suited bim tbat mucb better.
Wben be saw barrooms flourisbing and gambling tbe
favourite amusement, be was satisfied as to bis call.
Tbese people needed a preacber and tbat was bis
business.
So be set to work with prayer and consecrated toil,
and a revival followed as already described. All aflame
as be was, it was but natural for tbe neigbbourbood to
come and watcb tbe fire. His congregations grew.
His cburcb enlarged. He wanted to preacb to cbildren
also and soon be was superintendent of a flourisbing
Sunday Scbool. Tbe people liked tbe manner of it.
Not tbat bis college words or city accent appealed to
tbem, nor bis modesty tbat at times seemed almost
timidity, but tbey bad felt tbe tbrall of that tbing
wbicb bas made every orator since tbe world began —
earnestness. Tbis boy migbt be mistaken but be was
certainly not afraid of tbe wildest waves of Galilee.
They watched bim as he set out, hearing a voice from
afar to walk on tbe waters. It was with small steps
tbat he first began, a tiny Sunday Scbool, tbe first in
all the neigbbourbood, a collection in church (that took
a long time to win their favour), and then a toy print-
ing press, a tiny high scbool, and a little home for a
few orphans. As these things grew and the wonder of
them accumulated, men were prone to see them rather
GIVING UP THE CHURCH 227
than the thing that made them, as one gazes upon the
towering eucalyptus, forgetting the hidden cambium.
But he never forgot. He knew wherein his life con-
sisted. Did he come to forsaken Clinton ? It was to
preach. Did he found a Sunday School, a church, a
college, a paper, an orphana^ge ? It also was to preach.
These all were only incidental to his main purpose
which was to deliver a message from the King.
And his throne was the cheap pine pulpit in the
plain old church. For forty-seven years he reigned
there, and for six more among his orphans. From it
he interpreted his life, and all lives, but oftenest The
Life. From it he breathed such a benediction as one
feels when he is conscious of the presence of God.
As the Sabbaths passed and the church, and the
Sunday School, and the magazine, and the college, and
the orphanage grew — so with them also grew those
who listened to his words. In spirit they grew, and in
years. The young passed into age, and the aged into
eternity. It seemed only a little while before he was
marrying the little children whom he baptized yester-
day. And one day the first flake of snow fell on his
head. Another followed and soon his hair was white.
As time passed the voices of his people must needs
reach him as though muffled by an ever growing
distance, and the darkness that might not be denied
fell upon his eyes. He remembered his strength as a
dream of long ago and knew that the time had come
for him to lay aside his scepter.
So, shortly after they began tearing aw^ay the old
church where he had reigned for forty years, he offered
his resignation. The little congregation of fifty had
now grown to five hundred and, though they knew
228 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
everything he told them of his failing strength to be
true, they tenderly refused his request. That was in
1907, on August 11th, and he took it as a good omen
of promise that he might yet be able to finish out his
full half-century of service as their pastor. For two
more years he laboured and the Power kept blessing
his work. His congregation of citizens, college boys,
and orphanage children had passed the five hundred
mark and even the new church was taxed to seat them.
More and more it had become evident that first the
Sunday Schools and then the congregations of orphans
and townspeople should best be divided for their mu-
tual good.
The final separation he describes : " This day. May
11, 1909, was an epoch in the history of the Thorn well
Orphanage. The teachers and pupils were organized
into a church. The services were held on Tuesday
night. Dr. Law presiding. One hundred and sixty-
three members were enrolled. The name of Thornwell
Memorial was selected. So another of my long cher-
ished plans has been carried out. The First Church
retains three hundred members. For the present no
change will be made in the hour of worship until our
Sabbath School is organized. The church school will
be fearfully depleted and they will have to work. It
will take wisdom now to guide the ship aright."
And then one day, August 10, 1909, in Washington,
hearing and seeing poorly, he was struck by a carriage,
so severe a blow as to fracture his shoulder and render
him unconscious and helpless. Kind friends carried
him to the hospital and soon his loved ones were about
him. As he slowly recovered his strength he found
that all his physical resources had lessened. Especially
GIVING UP THE CHUKCH 229^
was his deafness increased. The accident had hap-
pened m the forty.fifth year of his pastorate. On the
preceding May 28th he had written :
"Forty-five years ago, this day, I was ordained to
the gospel ministry and made pastor over the three
httle churches of Clinton, Shady Grove, and Duncan's
Creek, seventy-three souls in all ! The churches or-
g^nized out of the Clinton church alone are Clinton
iirst, 333 members; Thorn well Memorial, 163- Eock-
bridge, 23; Clinton Second, 12; and Sloan's Chapel
(coloured), about 25. These are all well located and
eventually will grow. I propose giving five more years
of good work to the Clinton First Church, if God will,
before I lay down the pastorate. I would prefer mak-
ing the change now to the Thornwell Memorial, but
whatever is for the good of the cause I will obediently
But it was hard to say good-bye. Nor was it within
the power of his people to know how he yearned for
the privilege of continuing to be their pastor. To give
up his pulpit seemed not far different from ffivine- ud
his life. To leave them was to die. ^ 6 F
Yet knowing that the time had come, he took the
next step :
"This afternoon I am to be installed pastor of the
Thornwell Memorial Church. This is the last link of
the Cham devised so long ago by me, the idea being
complete separation between the First Church and the
orphanage with a view to loosing me from the pastorate
of the former. My accident in Washington has hurried
my resignation, showing as it did the tenderness of the
people for me. But I am now so sorely afflicted with
deafness, which has been greatly increased by the
230 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
accident, that I feel incompetent to do pastoral work,
and unless there is improvement my duty to resign will
be so clear that there will be absolutely no alternative."
And so the throne room was changed but it was still
a sceptered kingdom and a tireless old ruler wielded
his power. Within a month he was writing :
" On Sunday I conducted the morning worship at
the orphanage assembly room. I preached at 11 a. m.
and conducted the communion. I attended both Sab-
bath Schools ; I moderated three meetings of sessions,
received ten members, and conducted the baptism serv-
ice. I am proud of m}^ day's work."
It was two more years before the parting came.
Then, like some Moses who was going apart to view
from higher mount the Promised Land before his
translation hour ; like some Elijah who, all knew, was
to be taken from them that day in fire and glory, he
prepared to say good-bye.
And he wrote in his diary : " It is hard to say good-
bye."
" I have at last, led I trust by the same kind hand
that has guided me ever, been enabled by His grace
to lay down the pastorate of my beloved charge, the
First Presbyterian Church of Clinton. The session
met. I told them my physical condition, my inability
to discharge the duties of the pastorate, and handed
them my resignation. I need not say that this is a
bitter trial. I have loved the church most tenderly.
I have given it my soul. But I realize that my work-
ing days as a pastor are over and that I must yield to
the inevitable. The congregation is called to meet and
accept it — two weeks from to-day. I will have the
rest quickly done and before the first of August the
GIVING UP THE CHUKCH 231
tie will be severed. Even as I began my ministry so I
end It here— with J6$a iv v4naroi^ o^q>r
With this royal shout of joy he had begun his
journal of work in Clinton a haif-century before It
had changed but slightly in all those years, adding
little by little the note of triumph.
"As I think of my poor eyes and their waning sight
my hope is God. I feel happy that I have had the
courage to give up the pastorate of the First Church.
I am happy because it was right for me to do it,— and
yet what regrets come to me as I think of the long
lifetime of service ended. It means to me as nothing
else could,— the coming end. A few more years and
then I shall know even as also I am known."
It is well to go into his heart and walk up and down
m It at this supreme moment of his life, this hour of
self-abnegation. Conscious as ever of his meaning to
the world we may still see that realization m his words
as he writes :
" In presenting my resignation to you of the pastoral
charge I have had in my hands for these forty-seven
years, it is only natural that I should do so with great
emotion. When I came to you forty-seven years ago,
your fathers and mothers received me as if I had
been their own son. As the years passed by I was still
more tenderly connected with them, by uniting them
and their children after them in marriage, by laying in
the grave those who were near and dear to you, and by
receiving into the kingdom of God more than a thou-
sand souls. But even a long life must end its course at
last ; the time has come when I can no longer serve
you efficiently, and when I must ask you to sever the
tie that I had hoped would only be broken by death.
232 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
In asking you to unite with me in going before Presby-
tery with a request for a dissolution of the pastoral re-
lation between us, I am not influenced solely by the
pressure of other work now resting upon me, nor by
the feeling that my health is suffering from double
labours, but rather by the fact that no matter how we
think of it, it is ever impossible for one man to do two
men's work, and do it well. For several years past I
have recognized my inability faithfully to discharge my
pastoral duties. I found that I was unable though not
unwilling to do all the work that ought to be done,
and that the church was suffering and indeed suffering
severely because of it. Yery much against my wishes,
but driven thereto by my own ideas of pastoral re-
sponsibility, I have been compelled to take this step.
I could bear to suffer myself, but I could not bear to
see the church of Christ suffer. In giving up the work
among you I am giving up the object for which I have
lived for all these years."
Then the congregation looked upon their dear old
preacher and knew that he was right, though every
word was one of pain that he had written them. They
thought of his three hundred orphans and considered
their duty to them. In the gentleness of love they
accepted his resignation and the most inspiring village
pastorate in the history of America was ended.
" I preached my farewell sermon to-day," he wrote
on August 27, 1911, " Ephesians 3 : 14-19. It was a
very hard task to do. I then walked down out of the
pulpit and out of the back door. No one on earth
knows how much it hurts, and yet I am glad. The
long expected has come at last. So comes also the en-
trance within the veil."
GIVING UP THE CHURCH 233
But there was One who walked with him. He also
had foreseen this hour, He who never forgets nor fails.
He knew how this old broken-down servant of His had
toiled for Him in an utter abandon of unselfishness.
He had watched him for four decades as he refused to
take a salary from the orphanage depending on the
little ill-paid remuneration from the church he loved.
He had looked over his shoulder one day and watched
him write these words in his diary :
"The Board voted me ;^100 per month salary last
June to begin July 1st. I am taking this and placing
it to the president's salary and pension fund. I will
place the interest to the principal till it reaches ^10,000
and will then resign the church and retire on a pen-
sion ! which will be the interest of that fund — amount-
ing from ;^50 to $60 a month and will be enough."
And then during his illness in 1902 :
"Notwithstanding the fact that from July 18th to
January 1st I did no pastoral visiting, I find to my sur-
prise that my salary is paid in full for the first time
(on January 1st) perhaps for twenty years. Well, it
encourages me. My church is alwaj^s faithful, and
financially speaking I am ' passing rich ' on ^150 a
year."
And this also but yesterday :
" I am back home improved somewhat in symptoms,
but feeling like an old wreck, yet with the soul within
me that is that of the gay bark, all sails set, and skim-
ming along the salt sea. In truth I am wanting to do
all things and yet am able to do nothing."
And having seen all this He had acted.
One day a man in Atlanta, John Eagan was his
name, thinking, by whose impulse he may or may not
234 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
have known, that it was time to provide an endowment
for the president's chair at Thornwell, wrote as much
to the president and offered ;$5,000 on condition that
the remainder necessary be given by the end of that
ye3ii\ Then the good true friend whose heart He had
so often touched, Mrs. Nettie F. McCormick of Chicago,
added the necessary ^20,000, conditioning her gift upon
the interest of the sum going to Wm. Plumer Jacobs
during the remainder of his life and thereafter to the
Thornwell Orphanage.
And so it turned out that God had kept it all for him,
adding interest to principal, because he trusted in Him.
" I have found out " — so he had written years before
— " that if I work for God, He will take care of me ! "
XXII
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH
Gone the past days, come the last days,
Come the Autumn days once more.
Short the light time, long the night time,
On the lake we floated o'er ;
But the face-dreams, all the grace-dreams
Light us to the other shore.
THERE is a beautiful chorus in the Bacchae of
Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray,
which runs :
^' Happy he, on the weary sea
Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven ;
Happy whoso hath risen free
Above his striving, for strangely graven
Is the orb of life, so that one and another
In power and wealth doth outpass his brother ;
And men in their millions float and flow,
And seethe with a million hopes as leaven.
And they win their Will or they miss their Will,
And the hopes are dead or are pined for still j
But whoso doth know.
As the long days go,
That to live is joy, hath found his heaven.^^
It is this joy of living that we find in all great souls
which constitutes their highest ecstasy and their deepest
woe ; for as on the one hand it fills the dullest moment
with interest, on the other it accentuates the sensitive-
ness of the soul gazing upon the inevitable end. Who
235
236 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
that has lived long on earth has not felt the force of
those silent walls inimitably described by Poe as they,
so quietlj^ and surely, draw together until their victim
is crushed. For death begins to come long before old
age. At the topmost point of the speeding bullet's arc
the descent begins. At the hottest point of its cosmic
fire the sun commences to cool. At the very moment
when a man is strongest and most virile he begins to
die.
And as the quality of matter may be determined by
the way it takes fire so may the souls of men be de-
scribed by the way they take death. Some dully, as
an ox that is slaughtered ; some bitterly, as if abused
by a friend ; some afraid with a terror unspeakable as
if it were an unnameable horror ; and some face it as a
noble antagonist with whom each step is to be disputed,
an enemy indeed but a teacher withal.
Of such a sort was Wm. P. Jacobs.
Perhaps the highest point of happiness in his life
came in his thirty-seventh year. His church was
steadily getting on her feet ; his orphanage was happily
though anxiously founded; his magazine was at last
safe ; his high school was secure ; his health was at the
best it ever attained ; his heart was brave and strong ;
beautiful dreams were in his soul and around him in
a Christian home his wife and children were gathered.
Then, on January 16, 1879, there came the first
great catastrophe and with Theseus over Phaedra he
mourned :
'' My children motherless and my home undone,
Since thou art vanished quite ;
Purest of hearts that e'er the wandoring sun
Touched, or the star-eyed splendour of the night. '^
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 237
He was just about half through his life when half of
his life went away. Thenceforth the Great Sadness
settled upon him. Very little did he say about it but
very much did he grieve, and in his journal no anni-
versary of that dark date came without a line in
memory of her love and in hope of the ultimate re-
union.
From that day, though they came slowly yet very
surely, the enemy forces gathered about the citadel of
his strength and his life was in a state of siege. The
first point of definite attack was his voice which nearly
failed him for many months completely and at intervals
thereafter until the end. His general health was never
good. Even from his boyhood he was often sick. As
a lad at college his eyes kept paining him and his deaf-
ness was at its incipient stage. Physically he was very
poorly equipped from the beginning and he knew it
but was resolved to make every year count.
In the closing decade of the nineteenth century two
other blows feU heavily : the death of his father of
which we have already read and that of his " mother "
which came in 1899. Of this last he writes :
"I have been away in Nashville to see my poor old
dymg mother— at least ray mother for these forty-two
years. She died on the 17th of June and is to be
buried to-day in this town of Clinton.
"So ends a long, lovely, useful life. Dear old
Mother, how much you loved me ! I was not your own
child but you never seemed to know the difference.
You are in the presence now of the King of Glory and
of all you love. We shall meet again. Mother, in the
best of all countries. Till then, farewell."
As the century ended he seemed to realize that the
238 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
new lustrum was to be for him one of a losing fight
with death. " I v/ant to live a little while in this won-
derful twentieth century of which I have heard so
much," he exclaimed, and then more soberly :
" The new day,
The new year.
The new century.
" The first word I uttered in public service this year
was Jesus. May that word be the guiding thought of
this year for me.
" At midnight I prayed God for His presence and
the gift of eternal life. At cock-crow and at daybreak
I prayed for the same.
" I am living in a new age. Since last night I seem
to have closed up the lids of a mighty volume. I am
saying farewell to the years gone. This is year one
of the twentieth century."
And in that new century the same strange com-
pulsion of God was upon him. The Presence kept
urging him on and on and on, even in old age, to new
fields of endeavour.
" That is the reason I keep working and planning,"
he testifies. " God is with me and for His sake and
because of His presence I shall work for them till I
die. I have a feverish desire to do much, very much.
Humbly trusting Him, I shall press on, and on, and
on. My craving is for eternal life ! I do not know
how it is to come. I have no proof but the divine
word and the divine presence that I shall live again.
But I hang my life on that hook. It bears me up. It
is strong."
From now on we see a terrific struggle. Death, —
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 239
slow, creeping, remorseless death, the kind of a death
that will not hurry, that cannot be made to hurry, kept
nagging him, browbeating him, tantalizing him, threat-
ening him, choking him, taking away from him first
this means of consciousness and then that ; sapping his
vitality, destroying his senses, as if Some One intended
to test the quality of that man to see whether he was
indeed the sort He had intended to make him.
And of all this His subject was fully conscious :
" The years are going by and I am growing older.
Often the longing comes into my heart to live life over
again. The days have swept by me, till now even my
children are bended and their brows are furrowed. I
am nearing my sixtieth birthday. For years the same
catarrhal trouble that made me deaf in one ear has raged
incessantly with its ringing bells and beating drums.
Through my head admonitions are plentiful that my
youth is gone, my vigorous manhood well spent, and
the day of the ascension not far away. But oh, how
busy I am ! Two hundred children call me Father and
look to me for guidance. I need strength from the
source of all strength, and indeed He will not fail me."
There are men whose lives are valuable out of all
proportion to anything they may have said or written
or done. In a world where " conduct is three-fourths
of life " the quality of the living is paramount. Neither
Providence, which is the will of God, nor purpose,
which is the will of man, permits many lives to excel
all others. Once perhaps in a generation these com-
bine to create a situation where the common light of
day is eclipsed and the corona of a vast sun-life may
be studied. It may be noted that in each case it is
darkness that does it.
240 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Indeed the deeper the gloom of the overhanging
shadow, the livelier became the interest of the man
within in the source and meaning of that blackness.
The less he had left the more he had given.
*' I never lie down to rest now but that two thoughts
come to me with great power," he tells us. " One is
the shortening years that I must spend on earth. The
other is an intense longing while I am here to break
through the wall that stands between this world and
the next. There surely is an indubitable way, some-
where, some means by which the soul and its creator
may deal with each other. If the ether bears a wire-
less message across the ocean so that the two who con-
verse, though invisible, are yet really in touch, there
should be, there must be an equally palpable though as
yet undiscovered avenue of approach to God. Perhaps
at present a charged wire would not be more deadly to
the body than would a breaking away of the wall of
partition to the soul. But that such a way will yet be
safely opened to the children of men, I doubt not. Till
that way is made manifest what folly to seek, as some
do, to communicate with departed spirits. We surely
could find out God before we find these frail things
called men. " Oh ! to know God, to know God ! "
So that was what this struggle with death was
bringing him ! Then surely it was not wholly a
robber.
It is a holy hour when we are privileged to look into
the inner deeps of the soul of a great and true man
searching for the light in the final darkness. To live
is a thing so infinitely beautiful that there is nothing a
man would take in exchange for it. Yet he says :
" I am not asking for long life. He knows I want it
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 241
for His sake and for the furtherance of the good things
for which He has bidden me work. But that is for Him
to decide. JS'o part of my unconditioned prayer is a
plea for length of days. I leave that with sincerest
joy in His hands. I am sure He will give it to me if it
is for the best."
Dr. W. C. Gray, long time editor of the Continent^
wrote once that the first sensation of a man who dis-
covered that he had grown old was a shock of sur-
prise. So when the sixtieth birthday of our subject
came he tells his journal ;
" My plans are as though I were to live a hundred
years. My preparations are as though I had reached
the last year of my life. The spirit of immortal youth
is as strong in me as ever. It seems impossible that I
should die. I look with amazement at myself in the
glass and I wonder if it be truly I, this image of an old
fellow that I see there ! Sometimes I think that this
sentiment is born of the conviction that I shall never
die — that even now I am living in eternity — the God of
life dwelling in me. So my sixtieth birthday shall be
as was my fiftieth, my fortieth, my thirtieth — a look-
ing steadily forward. I have no time to look back.
There is work, a great amount of it ahead."
So the years passed and each day grew darker, each
voice softer and lower until one day :
"I left Macon for Atlanta at 4 a. m. Met Dr.
C in his office at eleven o'clock. V^ery kindly and
gently he told me that the trouble with my eye was
cataract and that I was doomed to blindness or a severe
operation in that eye. He urged me ' just to bear it
patiently and not have an operation, depending on the
other eye for service.' I trust in God. I have no
242 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
doubt but that the touch of the Master's hand can cure
me, as it did many another in his time, so I am to en-
dure blindness in one eye and deafness in one ear and
the eye and ear infinitely valuable even if not much ac-
count. I am intending to put my physical foes in my
Lord's hands. I shall fight them to the bitter end.
Lord, be my portion. Thou art my helper and I trust
in Thee."
So he closed the year as he himself described it with
one eye and half an ear — but then they were enough.
Thus, failing, he deepened the meaning of his life to all.
In 1908 his sixty-sixth birthday came. Having
burnt his candle fiercely and it being a shorter candle
than most he was already over seventy. As he takes
stock of his days he writes :
" This is my sixty -sixth birthday. It makes me very
serious when I think of how swiftly I approach the
time of old age. I do not fear death. My certain
trust is in the unfailing right hand of my dear Lord.
I do not know about the eternal life but I believe ! and
to my Lord Jesus be the glory.
"I am not, however, planning or preparing for
death. Per contra, for a vigorous, active, useful life. I
shall fight clean down to the end against every physical
ailment and shall scheme that every day shall be one
of vigour and activity. I just decline to be anything
else than a blessing to the world. It is very true that
I must lay aside some of the work. I do, but it shall
be mine to see that others who take it up move off on
right lines and do it better than I."
All his lifetime, he said once, he had been pressed
by the thought that this life is for work and eternity
for rest. And even Riverside, with its summer vaca-
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 243
tion quiet, worried him a little unless pencil and paper
were near at hand and messengers constantly going
back and forth from Clinton. His vacations were only
variations of work.
There was something singularly prophetic in the
lines he wrote on the morrow of his next birthday, for
they were penned just seven years before his last on
earth, his year of darkness :
'' I have just received * Eobert Hardy's Seven Days '
— only seven days to live. I am now asking—-* What
shall I do effectively for the Lord in the next seven
years f To-morrow is my sixty-seventh birthday. I
have been wanting to be an active pastor in my dear
church until my fiftieth pastoral year ends— May 28,
1914. Five years more."
It is interesting to note how intimate a relationship
his spiritual life and blessings had with his physical
health. Because of the one he was constantly en-
couraged as to the other. Because God was with him
he felt new vitality and power :
" I am altogether unwilling to believe that I am old
or that there is to be any termination to my usefulness
and so I am pressing right on to larger endeavour. I
have carried out so m.any of my proposals that I have
gotten firmly persuaded with David — ' The Lord is on
ray side ! ' and in His strength I shall go on to four-
score years and ten, which would give me a lifetime
still before me."
But this did not suit his antagonist. There must be
some new stroke different from the slow failing of eyes,
and ears, and vital organs, for it was quite evident that
if these were his only weapons the battle would be too
long. Came the accident at Washington and since the
244 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
office of this chapter is to uncover a wonderful soul
fighting a marvellous battle with the arch-enemy of all
mankind, we ask him to tell it in his own words.
" Just four weeks ago this day I was knocked down
in the street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, and
run over by a surrey with four people in it. With a
broken shoulder, lacerated side, a bleeding throat and
a dozen minor wounds, lying on the pavement of a
strange city one would look for no comfort, yet com-
fort there was. Strangers summoned the ambulance
and got me to the emergency hospital in an unconscious
condition. Then I spent two wretched days and nights,
and one morning on opening my eyes I found Dillard
standing by my side. It w^as as though I had seen an
angel from heaven. His practical eye soon saw my
needs and got me into fine shape and into a private
room and gave me perfect attendance. Nurses, order-
lies, doctors, all made the days and nights more com-
fortable. I spent eight days in the hospital and was
then brought home. Florence and MoUie had reached
Washington the next day after Dillard and oh ! how
sweet their ministrations were. Nobody ever had
better children than God has given me. They brought
me safe home, home ! home ! Day by day, with lov-
ing care far beyond my dreams, my dear children and
the noble people of Clinton have watched over me,
nursed me, fed me, ministered to me, sent me loving
messages. My children from far and near and friends
I never heard of have sent the tenderest of messages.
I have had the pleasure of seeing my dear brothers and
sisters Henry and Mamie Sperry, Charles and Bessie
Little and all their children. So I have been brought
to this day with an arm fast bound to my side, and am
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 245
sitting on my front piazza in the early morning for the
first time. I will go over to morning prayers. I want
to go over to Florence's for dinner. I feel the thrill of
returning health. Thank God, I have not murmured
nor complained. The dear Lord has been with me.
With more pain than in all my lifetime before, I have
yet felt how good and merciful He is. It was worth it
all to have such showers of blessings. My broken collar
bone still pains me and I write with difficulty, but I am
getting to my work again.
"On Sunday last I went down to the Thornweli
Memorial to be present at the organization of the or-
phanage Sabbath School. Our First Church Sabbath
School was also organized on the same day. The com-
bined schools made a showing of four hundred and fifty
pupils— the largest ever."
From all which it would appear that death could get
very poor comfort from his feat. " I am not well," he
exclaims, " but I am glad of heart. My life has been
ever under divine protection. Oh, it is a great thing
to know God and I know Him ! "
So there must needs be another stroke. The other
eye must go.
" I have just seen Dr. Parker," he writes in Charles-
ton in March, 1911, " and he has sentenced me. The
trouble in my eye, as in the other, is cataract. Well,
God's will be done. And yet I pray Him to do the
best thing for me. He knows what it is. After a
while my sight possibly may be restored by an opera-
tion. In the meantime I will give much time to God's
word— until I can read no more. I will preach as
never before and I will trust myself wholly into the
hands of the dear Lord. It will be a year at least be-
246 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
fore I can have the operation. It comforts me to think
that some good and skilled physician, even such a one
as the dear Lord Himself, may yet help me by his
wonderful skill. In God will I trust. To Him be
praise."
" There is really no reason why I should get ready
to die yet. Though as to that, I do not need to get
ready. I have been ready for forty years past."
Now we watch him, old, sick, blind, deaf and wonder
if he is discouraged by pain and weakness. What good
can religion do such a man ? He answers :
" Threatened as I am with loss of sight and hearing,
and without teeth with which properly to masticate my
food, and that too at the threshhold of my seventy -first
year, when most men lay their burdens down, it would
seem as if I should be ready to turn over my tasks to
younger hands. And yet at all these calamities I laugh.
This soul of mine is just about as young as ever ; nor
can it understand what has happened to its poor
encasement that it wabbles so, and does such poor
service."
So far there doesn't seem to be much of a sting about
death. Even the total darkness of the blind could only
bring him the dread of not being able to work :
" How beautiful the world is and how happy I am
that I am alive and am still able to work. I dread the
days of darkness, when I can no longer work, but am
hoping for those good times when, with all my loved
ones, I will be forever happy and forever young.
" I wonder if any living man is as happy in his work
as I am. I dearly love it. I thank God dearly for
having permitted me to do what I have done as His
steward and His ambassador. My life is now in the
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 247
late evening but I am as happy as a boy in the recall
of the joys of yesterday."
In March, 1915, he was seventy-three years of age
as years are measured but a decade older in decreasing
activity. The intensity of the struggle had grown but
he had reasons of his own for wishing to reach a
greater age.
" For my children's sake I want to pass my eightieth
year. It will encourage my children. They will see
that life is possible even with a very poor, infirm body,
and that life is worth while in old age. My friends
sent me in many flowers and sweets. I am very glad
that the flowers came. They are appropriate to my
spring-time birthday."
The very next month he noted the end of a good
servant that had for many years helped him in all his
laborious tasks.
" I have had a sad heart all day, all because I have
parted with a dear old friend. All the light in my left
eye has faded out,— the one covered with a cataract.
But, thank God, I can still see with my right eye. I
can still use it for reading, and that is a great and won-
derful comfort. How long it will last me and whether
the other can be given back to me fills me with anxiety,
but I will wait for God's time, fully assured that when
He has shut me off from hope and happiness here He
will give me a great and wide door into His kingdom.
But to-day brought me pleasure too. I preached well,
with a good clear, strong voice, two good sermons. I
received three members into the church, so beginning
the year well. O Lord, help Thou me."
So, when one of his sons published a volume of
poems he selected this as the one he felt
248 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
Five little panes of dusty glass,
And an unmeasured universe await !
Yet, beautiful, O ye lovely forms I see.
And passing sweet, O luscious fruits I taste,
And charmed voices, rapturing words I hear,
And odours winged with Heaven's breaths I
smell,
And touch ! O God, what wondrous things are
these I touch ?
Five little panes of dusty glass j
0 mist, O mystery !
And brief the time, ah me, so short the time,
To taste, to smell, to touch, to hear, to look
Through such confused, dusty, dazed ways.
So long a while between the moments when,
One (a Shadow dimly seen and heard)
Doth wipe away the smudges from the panes.
So many half-lit worlds to see.
So many muffled voices hear,
Such countless forms of things to feel,
Such breaths, breast- warmed of Heaven's draught,
Such untried sweets to taste of, but —
Only a momentary glance,
Through five tiny, smeared panes of glass !
Yet, O so beautiful !
The odour of them is a universe !
So fair their favours, so entrancing sweet they
seem,
So pleasing is their voice, so good the touch of
all —
1 crave one pane the more,
One crystal pane — and then —
O worlds, O Infinite, O God !
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 249
Silence and darkness — the two beautiful senses going
slowly I Each year, fewer words and lower ; each day,
a lesser light. And the books, the time had come to
tell them farewell, these lifelong companions so silent
but with such compelling voices. Of them he writes :
"I have in my library some three thousand books.
These have become in part a history of myself. I have
lived in the books and they have been absorbed in me.
For the most part they are good and useful books, and
I am desirous that in some suitable way they should be
kept together and made a monument to ray memory.
Old dry books are a very suitable memorial of an old,
dried up man. I want my children to see to this.
There are quite a number that are valuable. There is
the only complete set of Our Monthly in existence.
My shorthand library is perhaps the best in the South.
I have coftiplete files of the Minutes of the Assembly
and of Enoree Presbytery. I have a complete set of the
Southern Presbyterian Hemew. My theological library
contains the ancient orthodox views. I have about
twenty volumes of my own mother's and five hundred
to six hundred of my father's, some books from
Dr. Thorn well's library. On the whole the collection
is unique and it ought not to be scattered. A hundred
years hence it would be an object lesson. My hope is
that the Thorn well Orphanage may have a great library
building some day, and that one room may he set apart
as a Meinorial Room of the founder of the orphanage
and that my hoohs may he a part of the furnishing of
that room. This is only a little of my folly, but even
wise men are foolish at times."
That was a sad, sad day on which he knew that he
had read his last line. JSTor could another interpret
250 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
their message through ears that could not hear. He
whom God had loved so well and to whom so many
favours had been shown was now exalted above most
of the favoured few in that he was chosen to show
forth the marvellous spirit of man battling with death
and losing by slow degrees, yet all the while happily
teaching in the dim light of the gloaming, listening in
the ever deepening silence for God. And for her also
— " Just fifty years ago this day," he wrote on April
20, 1915, " I was married to Mary Jane Dillard ! Oh,
how I loved her ! And now the years that have passed,
filled as they have been with struggles and successes,
almost terrify me. I look forward but the sun is riding
low and the horizon is full of dust. Yet beyond the
sun is the welcome into a fairer day and the return to
love and trust immeasurable."
From that hour it had been a lonely fight. His
children growing up left him with only his orphans.
Though son and daughter lived in Clinton and repeat-
edly offered him their homes he would not have it so.
It was as if he accepted the challenge of death and
would fight it out, man to man, until the end. In such
a state he could only spend most of his time lifting up
his prayer for the presence and blessing of God. It
seemed to take the place of a mass of work. He kept
planning and building, saying, ^' Ambitious projects in
an old man may not seem wise but he who lives in
eternity never grows old." Even poor receipts for his
orphans could not terrify him. " I am sending for six
more little children," he says. " I always do this when
supplies run short." In 1913 he became practically
stone deaf, and in 1916, as the light grew dimmer and
dimmer, his writing in his diary became more and more
O
O
THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 251
irregular until, in a hand that disclosed his inability to
see the lines of the page, he wrote, on November
14, 1916, the last entry in his own handwriting:
" Nearly blind, I go to Dalton on Friday to the Synod
of Georgia."
And there, to a Synod that, having adjourned, waited
to hear his last message until his belated train came, he
committed his orphans, and though he could not see
their tears nor hear their prayers for him and them, he
knew that all would be well.
Back to Atlanta he went, happy in the hope that the
operation on his eye would restore his sight. The
operation was performed on the twenty-first but it was
not successful. The darkness deepened. The great
hope vanished. He was blind.
But unconquered. As soon as his health permitted,
he left Atlanta and went busily at work again. He
wanted to preach, for the time might be short. He had
a book to write. The investments of the orphanage
must all be looked after. New concrete sidewalks
must be built, — oh, there were so many things to be
done and so short a while to do them in ! And besides
if he was to die it must be at work, not while being
nursed even by his children, in a far-off city.
So to work he went — back to preaching and to
editing, to the holding of meetings of the session, to
his orphans' Sunday School and to writing his book on
immortality. When spring came he went up to his last
Presbytery, his church of the orphans reporting three
hundred and thirty-six on the roll, the largest in the
county and one of the largest in the Presbytery.
When commencement days came in June the receipts
for the year showed ;^70,000, the largest in the history
252 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
of the orphanage and the endowment fund had almost
reached ;^200,000. The same month he made a trip to
Beaufort and a severe cold settled on his lungs. In
August he went over on a little outing, his last trip to
visit his children in Atlanta. Then he hurried back to
his home — to his church with its session, every member
of whom would lead in public prayer ; to his preaching
and work. Sunday, September 9th, came. He made
it a very busy Sabbath. Sunday School in the morn-
ing, two preaching services, a meeting of his session,
visits to his orphan children, a Sabbath typical of the
thousands like it he had spent in the same good cause.
Tired at last, he laid himself down that night in peace
to sleep — in the Perfect Silence, in the Deep Darkness.
And his battle with death was ended. He had won !
w
XXIII
THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL
And when to what unimaged lea,
On what weird wave I ride,
In midst of what vast mystery.
On swell of what new tide,
If One who waits by fiotsamed sea
Should draw me to His side —
On that strange beach should stoop for me —
I shall be satisfied.
HEN a man dies he loses everything except
his life.
Those who come after him divide his pos-
sessions. Even his personal effects pass eventually
into hands he never knew, or they are destroyed by
purpose or accident. His reputation diminishes ; his
glory fades ; hour by hour his memory perishes ; only
his life abides.
Forgetting the assurance of confident words where-
with we speak of the future life we write now of this
hour and this earth. We view institutions and know
them to be persons. They breathe, they move, they
live. And their souls are the souls of some who were
or are ; who breathed into them the breath of life
until they became living spirits. That is what Emer-
son meant when he said that every institution is but
the lengthened shadow of one man, and Carlyle when
he described history as the life stories of the world's
great men. So institutions are begotten in the wild
253
254: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
ecstasies of passionate love of will for Will, of dream
for Dream, of spirit for Spirit.
Thus three great chains bind a soul to its school —
one is the attitude of the creator to that which he has
made, one is the devotion of the inventor to that which
he has dreamed and one is the love of a father for his
child. And these three are one. For the soul of
dreamer, creator and father passes into the school, in-
forms its buildings, breathes softly over its campus and
becomes the atmosphere, the spirit of the institution.
The ideal building is a man. In an educational
building, for example, every lineament of the ideal
character should be drawn in its face. Honesty should
be there with all its vast contempt for veneer and shod-
diness ; Reliability should be there with its durability
as of stone ; Permanence should be there speaking of
to-morrow when the present is yesterday ; Dignity
should be there to weave its outlines into every life that
comes within its pale ; Reverence should be there with
its upward pointing hand — all these should be read in
its face as in the face of a man, and every other quality
of the ideal expressing in structural strength and archi-
tectural beauty a personality distinct and perfect. Im-
perfections in a millionaire's palace are permissible, but
not in an institution whose perpetual office is to teach,
to make character, to beget children after its kind. So
the spirit of a man is revealed in the institution he
founds, and after he has gone that spirit abides ; it was
his life given to it. It lives after he dies by the will of
a successor of kindred spirit and similar soul.
Therefore, as we look at the Thornwell Orphanage,
we view really its founder. He is more plainly seen
there than in his church which came to him in form
THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 255
and creed from out of the ages, or in his college which
he soon committed to the hands of others. It was into
Thornwell Orphanage that he breathed the spirit of his
life.
How shall we characterize that spirit ? It was so
human and so divine, its elements so manifold that one
is puzzled looking for a point of entrance to its under-
standing until he suddenly is startled by its face. For
the outlines read there, in campus, and building, and
catalogue, and discipline, and school and church, and
design, and purpose are the features of its father. As
his soul had expressed itself in his own face so also in
the face of tixis home of the fatherless, his dreams
and hopes, his prayers and high ambitions, his tender
love for the helpless, his mighty devotion to God had
found another form of revelation.
And as we study those features these are the things
we read in them :
We see a man who believed that orphans should be
educated as well as clothed. This was the new idea
which he injected into orphan-care in America. The
fact that a child was fatherless did not, in his opinion,
deprive it of the right to think and learn. Hitherto
orphan homes had taken the form of great barracks
into which hundreds of the unfortunate parent less were
huddled until they could be bound out or adopted.
This is still what an orphanage means in the greater
part of America. This man built homes for his or-
phans better in every way than that he built for him-
self and his own children. He found for each home a
mother. He built schools for them and provided
teachers and libraries and museums and added a
technical school where iron and wood-working and
256 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
printing and cobbling were taught them. To these he
added a farm and a dairy so that dollars might be saved
as well as a school of agriculture founded. For the
girls^he provided classes in housekeeping, cooking, sew-
ing, laundering, canning, covering every feature of
their future home life. And having taught them to
think and to work he added playgrounds for fun.
We see a man who believed that religion is just as
important as any other food. Having built a church
tower so high that it dominated the village, he built
another so high that it dominated the orphanage. He
loved no landscape without such a principal motif. As
a consequence no child, no person ever entered the
Thorn well Orphanage who was not soon saturated with
its atmosphere which was ever heavily laden with
prayer and hymns and Bible texts. With these the
day began and with these it ended. Each morning,
often beneath only the starlight of winter, at 6 : 60
o'clock Eastern time, the children, having finished
their breakfast in Memorial Hall, marched to the semi-
nary chapel to pray and praise. Prayer-meeting came
on Thursday night ; blessings before each meal ; Sunday
School and two church services on each Sabbath ;
these were the external manifestations of the internal
fires. He never tired of them and the children grew
to love them so that when they had left their home for
the inevitable journey into the world the outer life
seemed strangely insipid and meaningless, lacking in
depth and ideal. For it was his purpose to give his
children schools mental, and manual, and moral not
only, but to add yet this highest gift — God.
So it came to pass that a new thing appeared under
the sun, an orphanage that was a home and school
THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 257
built and operated for the orphans and in order to
make plainer the meaning we add, not for the officers
and teachers. Of course in such an institution no child
was bound in any more than he was bound out. No
legal tie forced the little fatherless inmate of Thorn-
well either to come or to go. He might come when
there could be found room for him. He could go when
he pleased to leave the love and kindness and joy he
found there. Nor was he exploited a^ an orphan.
1 his last he forgot in the discovery that he had a Father
who was on earth as often as He was in heaven In
relying on that Father he found himself amply pro-
vided for both as to funds and family; since it seemed
that those whom he had lost he would some day have
again. All this the teachers taught him, having been
heraselves taught. Every rule they lived by, every law
they worked by, every ideal they thought by was for
ruled the greatest among them became servants of
pointed; on it all counsel centered. The Thornwel
Orphanage was not built in order that many offl et
bTl w r f ^''; ''^^"^ """^ P-^«°-' be p^rotected
by law and custom from over much labour, but that little
milt Teal fh^""f '"^'^ ""^^ "^^^^^ -^ therefrom
s^mSiarvTbi? T*""" ^'"^'^ '^g'"°'°&' ^« ^s old
STe Lo d t"'.v 'IT'' ^PP--»gly. - the fear
and L .1'' ^^'' ^'^^ P^P^^^ ^^ ga^-e himself
and he expected a similar gift from all about him. It
was the little boy again wandering among museums
and hbraries and bookstores and churches and orphan
homes of the ancient city by the sea and planning to
258 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
give himself to God. The orphanage was one way in
which he did it.
For he reconstructed his life there. Was it the col-
lege that he loved and the dear old Chrestomathic
Society ? He built one. Was it the quiet alcove of
the Charleston library, rich with the stores of past
wisdoms ? He built one. Was it a museum that
seemed very precious as he remembered the happy
hours he had spent poring over rare coins or studying
the outlines of ancient dinosaurs? He built one,
and having spent a long life in collecting such coins
gave them to it. Was it a church with a tower like
St. Michael's that floated ever in his vision and a ceme-
tery with their white memorials clustered around it ?
He built one.
All that God gave him he gave back to God.
And in giving it he expressed in form of stone and
timber the pure and gentle spirit of the truly great.
It is often thought of the light of certain radio active
substances that it consists of infinitely minute particles
of the incandescent substances emitted at a high rate
of speed so that a beam of such light is a part of the
substance. Such was the light on his campus, coming
as it did direct from his own flaming soul.
JSTo wonder that other leaders and other denomina-
tions were soon following in his footsteps as nearly as
they might. They heard, and came, and saw and went
away and built likewise. They liked his cottage sys-
tem ; they liked his technical school and farm, and
manual training courses — for both boys and girls ; they
liked all absence of legal bonds and the love that was
substituted instead ; they liked the insistence on the
educational idea throughout and the religious tone
THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 259
everywhere ; they liked the faith and courage that had
made all these possible.
Therefore, scattered here and there through sixteen
Southern and many Eastern and Western states, similar
institutions sprang up following this working model
until many times over his prayer was answered :
" Lord, ever be mindful of us and help the children.
When I am gone, raise up one like-minded to do this
work that it may go on forever ! "
And into all this work he carried a soul as sweet and
pure as a woman's. Here is a prayer taken from his
private journal, flooding its page with light.
" I love Him because He has heard my prayers. I
ought also to thank Him more than I have for having
kept me pure from my infancy to this day, fitting me
for the charge of so many girls and women as are
under my protection. Never once have I broken His
law of purity nor have I ever taken His name in vain
nor have I ever once been under the influence of liquor,
— nor once have I taken that which was not mine,
since I learned the right. I have never bet or played a
game of cards. I thank God for all this."
Such was the soul of his school.
XXIV
LIFE AND LEAVES
To roam, to rest, to reverie, whither
Speedeth mortal swallow ;
Shoreward, see ! from every-hither
Wings o'er crest and hollow !
To love he fares and every-thither
Love doth follow.
THERE is a strange law whereunder we live by
whose ruling all that we have is bought with
a price. If we want muscle we must work, if
we wish brains we must think ; even God gives nothing
away.
Occasionally some man finds a pearl of great price
and straightway goes and sells all that he has and buys
it. Such a man was W. P. Jacobs.
Through all his lifetime he was obsessed with the
idea of God. As a little boy we find him actually
loving God, with a love deeper and more intense than
that he felt for father or mother, or the " noble art of
phonography." It never occurred to him that any
other life was possible for him than the one he was
going to live, wherein he gave all he had and received
whatever God was pleased to give.
So he adopted as his life motto : " Seekest thou great
things for thyself? Seek them not." With it he
began and with it he ended his days.
The record of his life is the record of one who
260
LIFE AND LEAVES 261
abandoned all hope of honour or preferment, whose
friend was poverty, and whose companion sacrifice.
Those who knew him best think of him as a man who
had no pleasures except those associated with either re-
ligion or education. The things most men are inter-
ested in as fads failed to interest him. After a while
he gave up his home itself and made his abode with
the orphans. His manner of life among them was like
their own. He arose regularly at about six each morn-
ing and after dressing by a fire he himself had built
read his Greek and Hebrew Testaments until breakfast
at 6 : 30. In this way he was able to finish the perusal
of his Greek Testament fifty-seven times and of the
Hebrew an unrecorded number. In the winter cold
and darkness, or in the dewy morn of summer he ate
his breakfast with the orphans and thence, still under
the stars in winter, he went with them to chapel wor-
ship. By 7 : 30 the service was over and he was on his
way to his office, and there for some four hours he
breathed through the mails. A round of the orphan-
age campus followed his " work hour," then dinner with
the children, and thereafter reading and pastoral visit-
ing. Came supper and family prayers and the evenings
were spent in study by his own fireside with the orphan
children, and his own by blood, gathered around him.
This, with slight modification, was his habit of life for
nearly a half-century. To do it he renounced his
chances of fame in pulpit, his dreams of ease in litera-
ture, his opportunities of wealth in business. These
he gave up for God. What was his reward ?
During his lifetime more money was given him than
the richest men in the county had. He left an estate
valued at nearly a million dollars, consisting of a beau-
262 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACX)BS
tiful stone church, a college for orphans with some
forty buildings on its campus of over a hundred acres
and its farms of several hundred more, endowed in the
amount of a couple of hundred thousand dollars ; a
classical college whose assets were valued at approach-
ing a third of a million dollars ; these and many other
possessions of lesser note. All of these were his during
his lifetime, which is as long as any of us own any-
thing, to have and to hold and to enjoy with grateful
heart, a lifetime which almost reached the limit of
fourscore years, not by reason of strength so much as
of courage. Furthermore, he enjoyed his possessions
more than if they had been cotton mills or railroads,
got more pleasure from them and a deeper satis-
faction. His investments paid him well, in character
developed, souls made safe, ministers and missionaries
commissioned, helpless lives sheltered from suffering
and want, dividends of such a sort that the joy of them
abides. Over a thousand human beings entered his
church during his ministry and millions felt the attrac-
tion of his life by reason of this beautiful thing that he
had done. By means of this wealth it was given him
to replace weakness with strength, blindness with sight,
fear with courage, and disbelief with faith. He cared
for and educated a thousand boys and girls who other-
wise would have been taught in the other school, and
the doing of it gave him the intensest pleasure, so rich,
so genuine, so divine, that the tiny section of his for-
tune saved by and devoted to himself alone seemed
utterly insipid and fruitless. This great wealth of
work and accomplishment was part of his reward.
But only a part, for richer and greater w^as another
gift offered only to those who have given all. His life
LIFE AND LEAVES 263
he also left, a wonderful legacy, given away to any
who would have it. For it is not houses, nor lands,
nor gold, that count in the final estimates of values
but thought and devotion and deed. We should truly
" count time by heart throbs ; they live most who think
most, feel the noblest, act the best." We can do with-
out big money but we cannot do without great lives ;
we can dispense with big buildings but we cannot dis-
pense with examples of ideal conduct. They are too
sadly rare. And so it seems that when occasionally a
man acts as if religion and God were real, as if self
was to be lost sight of and the Power seen, only, there
comes slowly but very surely into his life a strength, a
grace, and a glory that is as it were a very halo of
God. Such lives are ever greater than their results
and infinitely more valuable. Large things are not to
be confused with great things. It is the motive that
characterizes the man. It is a life like this that gives
a clue to the ultimate goal of civilization. They are
rare now but they will come in ever increasing num-
bers. They are to our present age what the ability to
see once was to our primordial ancestors. It is not in
the founding of orphanages, or colleges, or churches,
that the fundamental purpose of such a life is to be
found, but in being something. These things are like
the seats in a classroom — they are necessary but they
are not what the student is there for. One hardly
dares to guess the mind of Providence, but it looks as
if the Power, when a generation has become deedlessly
unconscious of Him and His promises, sets such a man
up like some lamp with gas-illumined mantel as an ex-
ample of how beautiful even the simplest life msiy
become when the flame of God fires the humble earth
264 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
that contains it. Nor should we forget that whether
it be the final victory or the craving that drives
towards its attainment, both are God. And their
value lies in the innate conviction felt by the wisest
who see them, that they differ from other lives by
being an advance in the direction along which human
life is to develop, the ultimate goal of the years. Like
the highest wave of the incoming tide they mark the
present but not the final limit of the flood. Only by
them can one tell whether the tide ebbs or flows. The
privilege of living such a life is a prize to be grasped
after. It is the finished product of the world-factory,
as Henry Drummond would say, not where men make
things but where things make men.
And to this man who gave away his life there came
another beautiful return gift— no less a thing than the
marvellous privilege of living, itself, of knowing and
thinking and believing things not common among the
sons of men. One forgets the honours that came to
him, the D. D.'s and LL. D.'s, the compliments and in-
vitations, the appointments and distinctions, " baubles "
he called them in remembering the real gifts, the
strange fears, the beautiful faiths, the victorious cour-
age. To have lived deeply, to have known disaster as
a comrade with whom one has sojourned in the pit ; to
have walked arm in arm with woe ; to have sat down at
the table alone with poverty, to have believed in the
dawn at midnight, to have dreamed of summer amid
the chill of a wintry storm and withal to have been
patient with the men who could not see nor understand,
this is to live. His richest gifts were agonies and
dreams, toilings and lonelinesses, aspirations and soli-
tudes of desire wherein he and God walked toerether.
LIFE AND LEAVES 266
wherefrom they two went forth to victory. A night
of blood, thereafter a college ; an agony of sacrifice,
and therefrom an orphanage ; a meditation upon God
in the night season, and the next day a revival ; a
quiver in the darkness of fear, and out of the cloud
the Voice of Victory !
So when the account is cast up at the end, it is as
He said it would be. "Whosoever shall lose his life
for my sake shall find it."
In the back yard of his home lot, within a stone's
throw of the orphanage campus, there yet stands a
beautiful and stately white oak tree. For many dec-
ades its tender pink leaves have signalled the coming
springs. Under its spreading branches the wayfarer
has sought comfort from the sun all summer long ;
when the fall came its limbs have murmured beneath
the swift autumnal gale and the winter snows and
annual February freeze have not spared its branches.
Whether in spring or autumn, in winter or summer, it
has stood steadily and easily, because it was firmly set
by a thousand roots and filaments in the earth beneath.
From the waters that are under the earth it draws,
even in the driest summer, the hundred and more gal-
lons which its many leaves evaporate invisibly each
day into the air. From the unseen deeps the water
comes and into the unseen heights it goes, he who rests
beneath knowing not of either.
As it is with the oak, so it was with its master. A
scion from the Florist's garden he was set out where
another willed. There he took root and, growing, did
his work. It happened to be in a place called Clinton,
into whose soil his roots were deeply sunk. But he
was neither of Clinton, nor for Clinton, nor by Clinton,
266 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
though he loved Clinton more than any other spot in
the world. From far-off springs he drew his life ; to
far-off heights he sent his toils. Perhaps the most dis-
tinctive contribution he made to the world was in lift-
ing the orphan asylum into an educational institution.
The cottage system, in which a mother cares for a small
number of children, the church life into which each
child is drawn, the school with steadily rising grades
even through college, these were combined on his
campus, for the first time in the history of America.
The life-blood for these, the money wherewith nearly
forty buildings were constructed to embody this idea
came from far-off springs, as came his orphans to bene-
fit from them, from the lands to which they also re-
turned. From Chicago came buildings and large en-
dowment gifts, from Boston and Atlanta, and New
York, but not from Clinton. The power that built the
Thorn well Orphanage had no special relation to its en-
vironment excepting only to love and bless it. Xow
this is perhaps the most astonishing and significant
thing in his whole life. It was his dream to build a
little forsaken village church into a tower of light and
strength. Upon his tiny Sunday School, and church,
and high school, and orphanage of the seventies he
lavished all the love of a great soul and all the faith of
a will that could not be denied. By seme strange
process of spiritual law he gathered from afar the
power wherewith to make his dreams come true. Was
it prayer that did it, or toil, or an unusual genius, or a
spiritual telepathy that could move the Great Soul and
the lesser souls needed to complete the electric circuit
of his prayer-spirit ? Forty buildings of stone, and
brick, and cement, and only a pen to explain them ;
LIFE AND LEAVES 267
five hundred acres of woodland and meadow, and only
a printing-press to buy them ; a thousand orphans fed
and clothed and educated, and only a prayer to pay the
bills ! It is well for those who would take courage
from such an example that no local pride or profit
shai'ed largely in the doing of it.
From this we can understand the more easily what
he meant when he referred to his last will and testa-
ment as a long document " for such a simple thing as
leaving this world," and this although he had more to
leave than most. His church which was his life had to
be given up and his college which was his soul he
would see no more. The happy faces of his orphans
would fade and their voices die away forever. Friends
he had, and loved ones, and admirers by the thousands,
all these must be left, and the museum which he liked
well to arrange, wondering all the while whether an-
other hand as loving would so tenderly touch its speci-
mens when he was gone. All these he must leave, not
forgetting his collection of rare coins nor his famous
phonographic library — yet he thought it a simple thing
to leave them. And though he went suddenly there
was nothing left behind that needed to be explained.
He had done his work so well that the things he made
did not require his presence to live. When, the day
after he was laid to rest, the faithful treasurer of the
orphanage opened the safe he found every investment
listed and labelled and all the precious endowment safe,
not a worthless stock or bond among them. Through-
out the whole campus the work of the institution pro-
ceeded as naturally as the order of nature herself. It
was all ready for his successor. No controversy was
on, no danger was imminent, no explanations were
268 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
necessary, no orders were needed. In his library he
had gathered his history, in his diary he had poured
out his soul, in the stone of church and college and or-
phanage he had crystallized his dreams. It was simple
enough. All could see and understand. So he came
to the end of a perfect day full of work and service
and with the fruits of a long life about him, fruits
gathered of springs deep down underground and of
airs wafted from afar, he left for the lands wherefrom
his help had come.
The chief characteristic of his life had been its eter-
nity. That made it a simple matter to die.
He had all his life long loved and cultivated traits
of thought and feeling and conduct that are pei^nanent,
abiding, and everlasting. That made the change from
Clinton to the Yast Abroad less marked. The tran-
sient, the temporary, the passing vanity had no part in
him. That made it, even as he said, " a simple thing
to leave this world." He had lived the " Eternal Life "
and it is characteristic of the Eternal Life that it
cannot end. Every death is romantic, how sweetly
his ! But to see the halo of it one must go back to the
sad dark days of the seventies when only the bravest
could keep hope alive ; must recall the beautiful dreams
of his young manhood; must think of the tiny high
school and church and orphanage. Then the days pass
swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and one bright beauti-
ful day in September an old man is being borne to his
long home and the mourners go about the streets. The
long funeral procession leaves the church of a great
orphans' home and school, the wonder and love of the
whole South. In it are the faculty and students of a
stalwart young college growing under the administra-
LIFE AND LEAVES
tion of strong and helpful hands. As it passes the
corner of his home lot, hundreds of high school chil-
dren whom he was to address at their opening now
deferred in his memory, join their numbers and sorrows
to the train that moves on to the cemetery which his
church gave to the town decades before. These all
surround his grave with others from distant parts, the
greatest funeral gathering in the history of the town.
Between these two hours there is a great gulf fixed —
the hour of eager, self-sacrificing struggle and that of
honoured tribute and glory. The former is the life,
the latter the leaves.
And somehow, standing by the grave, our thoughts
go back, far back to a little boy in a great city. We
see him as he goes here and there from museum to
orphan's house, from college to Courtenay's, thinking,
lonely, wrapped in dreams of life and time, wonder-
ing all the while what the future has in store for him,
eager only to drink of that cup which would intoxicate
him with God. We see him as he enters his father's
home and School for Young Ladies at the close of a
long day's work at college, books in hand, telling about
the past, and the stars, and the noble art of phonography.
He is probably coughing if the day is cold and he wears
glasses because without them his eyes hurt him so. He
is thinking far thoughts of distant days whose dim im-
penetrable forms summon him forward. He is not
afraid to go, for his purpose is fixed. His heart beats
faster at the thought of a strange and beautiful resolve
as his lips murmur softly :
" Seekest thou great things for thyself ? Seek them
not."
XXV
HIS SUCCESSOE
Some dawning, ruby-lit for coming day,
Uprising from the unmeasured sea of night.
The palms shall pierce, at last, the misty gray,
And Thou at morn, a migrant, shalt alight
With those who followed, to the Final Lea,
The Lure that led them o'er the Lonely Sea,
There, where the Summer calls to all who love her;
Is this thy so great faith, my Golden Plover ?
Then, swiftly, for the Autumn cometh fast ;
And, surely, for the Winter maketh sure ;
With such an urge within me as thou hast ;
With such a voyage before me to endure ;
Though night and storm and cloud my way should cover,
I, also, shall arrive, 0 golden plover !
AS we watch this man with his back against the
wall fighting off Death with one hand while
he kept busily working with the other we real-
ize that we are looking upon a high and holy tragedy.
Grimly determined to work on to the very end, it was
as if the Power would test him to see how much cour-
age he had gathered from ten thousand mercies and
how much faith from ten thousand starlit nights.
First He added weakness to a body that had never
been strong, sapping his force at this point and at that
until defense after defense gave way and guard after
guard deserted. His throat failed and his speaking
voice, the preacher's favourite glory, left him. Yet
with his cracked and quavering tones he taught the
270
HIS SUCCESSOR 271
tears of his people to flow. When the daughters of
music had thus been brought low the grinders ceased
because they were few, leaving weakness and sickness
and every form of malnutrition in their stead. His
form bent before the winter storm, but the old lion
crept not back before the tigers of a newer age. As
long as he could see and hear he could fight for his
goal. So the Power muffled the voices of earth, though
it took a sharp and dangerous accident to do it the
more quickly, as if He would find out how fine a piece
of steel He had tempered or else set up again by life's
pathway "a man to be wondered at." As word came
less clearly and frequently from without he turned to
his eyes for comfort and deepened his thought and
purpose within by printed page and meditation. Then
the Power, all but satisfied, said, "Let there be no
light," and those that looked out of the windows were
darkened. Thereafter a strange thing happened. The
man redoubled his efforts, saying : " The day was Thine,
the night also is Thine ! " Without health, without
hearing, without sight, this aged wisp of a man fought
on for God, doing a work so heavy and so great that
when he was gone whole states had to be searched for
his successors, until one night after a day of heavy
labour and rich reward, his gray and tired head was
pillowed in a deep and lasting sleep.
And the battle with Death was ended.
Quietly, as the dawn was breaking, He came who had
always been near and the man who had wanted to
work till the end was awakened.
" Cassie ! " he called, " Cassie ! " and the little nurse,
his own orphan child now grown into womanhood,
hastened as often before to his side. " Cassie ! "
272 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
But it was not Cassie at all into whose arms he fell
back, but into the arms of the Power.
" Wonderful, beautiful expanse — expanse ! " his great
teacher for whom he had named his orphanage had
cried when he also had at last been freed.
But upon this man's lips no other cry came, only,
" Cassie ! " " Cassie ! "
He had once said that if ever a monument should
be erected to him he craved a rough-hewn ashlar with
these words engraved thereon : " The Child."
And again he added : " If they would explain my
life let them write on my memory stone — ' He loved
God and little children ! ' " Perhaps that was why
they only were present when the end came, just God
and one of his little children.
But it was dawn.
Then the news of his rapture went abroad. It had
long been expected, yet how sudden it seemed ! As
the black-faced types told of it and the wires trembled
its story, his earthly honour-day was ushered in. From
all over the nation hundreds of telegrams hurried their
witness of some far-distant grief. In the great cities
of a score of states the black head lines spread their
sadness and dismay. True friends in many a past des-
perate fight hastened to be with him in his last hour
on earth. The great of the commonwealth, the dis-
tinguished, the powerful, the wealthy, the good paused
to pay him tribute. About his bier with moistened
eyes and words of praise were that good friend and
comrade, the former governor of his state ; the Stated
Clerk of his Assembly, his lifetime co-labourer; the
pastor of his church ; the president of his college, and
many other men of high and holy office. From his
HIS SUCCESSOK 273
simple home they bore him to the chapel he had built
for the orphans and there they comforted themselves
with gentle words of interpretation and praise. There
where he had so often craved an audience for his Christ
a vast congregation gathered to do him reverence. He
who for more than a half-century had treasured the
name of each comer to his services, numbering them
weekly in his diary, now knew not — or shall we say
watched ? — how great an audience turned aside to do
him honour. After it was done the long procession
followed him on foot, as the manner of the village is,
to the cemetery which his early church had given to
the town where they laid him by her side from whom
he had so long a time been absent. And so it came to
pass even as he had said :
" Just twenty-iive years ago, this day, my darling
wife was taken from me. She reminded me of it early
this morning, in a dream.
" I have never forgotten her. I never will nor can
I. I hope to spend an eternity enjoying her love and
presence. Heaven has more of love in it than earth."
" The good gray head that all men loved " shall be
seen no more on earth. ISTo more shall the hesitating
step of him who needed strength fall upon his study
floor. She who would seek comfort in her accustomed
way from his lips must forever be content with recall-
ing the phantom words of memory and all that he
loved and treasured, his books, his boys and girls, his
Bible, his birds in the museum, and his bells in memo-
rial tower, these and all their like are delivered into
other hands.
And we look searchingly about saying, Who will
succeed him ? To whom shall we go now for inspira-
274 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
tion and for that fine interpretation of life's mysteries
ivhich only those can give who have met its toils and
pitfalls victoriously ? Looking upon this long life of
usefulness and service mellowed by so many experiences
of sorrow and softened by the sadness of the years, we
ask, " Who will succeed him ? "
Of course the only answer is : Whoever wishes to.
The mysteriously beautiful thing about this life lies
not in the results : a college, a church, an orphanage,
but in the quality of life and thought and feeling that
made them its normal and necessary expression. The
result was visible, consisting of buildings and endow-
ments and persons organized into congregations, or
classes, or homes. The life was secretly grown from
hopes high and holy ; from terrors vivid and fearful ;
from love, deep and abiding ; from struggles and woes
and joys. It was this invisible quality of life wrought
out in the crucible of the experiences of battle and
dream and prayer that constitutes his real life-work and
his legacy to those who come after him. The great
achievement of Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand
and Isabella was not the Nina^ the Pinta, and the Santa
Maria^ but the foam- wrought track across the Atlantic
that any sailor might thereafter follow.
Perhaps the fallacy into which the average human
being most easily falls in contemplating the works of
great men is to regard the things they create as their
gifts to the world. This is making a stove of Franklin,
or a phonograph of Edison. It is as if in thinking of
Shakespeare we saw only his Globe Theater. Every
truly great man is a trail-blazer. His work is not in the
bark that he strikes from the trees but in the trail, and
his real successor does not keep blazing the same trees
HIS SUCCESSOR 276
but pursues the path by the same spirit into the never-
ending Beyond.
We shall miss the meaning of this life if we regard a
church, a college, an orphanage, as its measure and
glory. These are only the normal and necessary re-
sults of something far greater than they — a motive, the
quality and power of which should alone be the object
of our regard. The church was once a thought, the
orphanage a sentiment, the college a simple resolution.
Faith is ever greater than its reward.
And we are persuaded, as we look back over that
three-quarters of a century, that the most wonderful
thing visible is not a town redeemed, nor a church
multiplied, nor a college founded, nor an orphanage
built, nor any nor all of these combined, but a life^ far
surpassing them in beauty, more important in results
and rarer in perfectness and power.
If we would find his successor, therefore, we must go
back to the bare, upper room to which the young min-
ister had come in the last year of the great strife between
the brothers, and recall again his fateful resolution to
give all to God ; to toil, to pray, to love, to hope, to be-
lieve, to win. No glory was there, nor honour, no back-
ing nor popular acclaim, no certainty of victory — only
a great need, a great purpose, and a great prayer. But
one person in all the world knew whether the young
minister would succeed or not — and He was silent !
Thus in a little dilapidated, crossroads town, with-
out post-office, or railroad, or bank, or mill, or library,
or printing-press, or hotel, or public utility, or institu-
tion, save only barrooms and gambling houses, a town
that had never had a resident pastor of any denomina-
tion and that boasted only one little square wooden
276 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS
church, without even a melodeon in it, this youth
whose chief interest was God and whose chief asset
was faith faced a steadily declining population, a
regularly decreasing business, and a spirit of hopeless-
ness and apathy ; this college lad whose loves had been
the retired alcoves of libraries, and relics of quiet
museums, and the silent messages of rare old coins.
And as he prayed the Power who stood by his side,
so attentive and so near, lifted the veil of the future in
His old familiar way whereby He has taught His seers
to see that which is to come, and lo, a little railway
engine came puffing its busy way up from the City by
the Sea, bringing a neat little printing-press and some
pretty fonts of new types. "With them also came a
tiny high school which kept growing and growing
until it w^as a college of many halls echoing the shouts
of thousands of students. As if by the grace of a fairy
a house full of little children grew slowly up out of the
earth and then others and others and — he could not
count the number of them for listening to the glad
laughter of their orphan occupants. Then over his old
dilapidated town a steeple slowly rose, with just the
faintest resemblance to St. Michael's, and a pulpit came
into it, and an organ, and chandeliers, so that they
could have services at night and see how to read the
hymns, and then it suddenly vanished, while as from a
dissolving view there slowly grew a beautiful stone
church, commodious, well-appointed, efficient, and
handsome. And while he gazed on it wonderingly a
great engine rushed past hurrying its heavy train from
metropolis to metropolis but staying its journey at this
happy little city of libraries and mills and churches and
lovely, cultured people.
HIS SUCCESSOR 277
He turned, delighted from his vision to tell of it, to
those who stood near, but they only laughed at him for
the Dreamer that he was. But like all the Lonely
Great he treasured up in his heart all the things that
had been shown him, knowing that he had seen further
than they. Though no other eyes had distinguished
them in the far blue haze of the future he knew that
these things wer^e. And this was the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
And now we know that he did well to believe, in
Him who taught him and in them whom he taught and
in that Better Thing which ever comes in answer to
the call of courageous, toiling faith as comes the spring,
hearing the mellow bells of the first yellow jasmine
who having sounded her call leaves the rest to God.
The milk-white blood-root has no fear in her heart of
the chill wind of winter, counting it a privilege to feel
the plash of cold rain on her cheek. The light shines in
the darkness, unafraid, preferring the night to the day
for that the need of his rays therein is the greater.
And the man whose soul was quickened by that Energy
from which all things proceed knew that without dark-
ness and winter, vrithout coldness and death, the beauti-
ful dream, of dawn, of spring, of life, could never come
true. And it was his desire to do his Dream.
" Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The inspiration, the divine
Insanity of noble minds
That never falters nor abates,
But labours and endures and waits
Till all that it foresees, it finds
And what it cannot find, creates ! *'
BOOKS FOR MEN
ROBERT E. SPEER, D.D. Merrick Lectures, 1917,
■— ' ' — — Ohio Wesleyan Untverstty
The Stuff of Manhood
Some Needed Notes in American Character,
net $1.00.
Br, Speer holds that the moral elements of mdlvidual char-
acter are inevitably social and that one service which each
man must render the nation is to illustrate in his own life
and character the moral qualities which ought to character-
ize the State. To a discussion of these ideals and some sug-
gested methods of their attainment. Dr. Speer devotes this
stirring, uplifting book.
CORTLAND MYERS, D.D. _ Minister of
• " Tremont Temple, Boston
Money Mad
i2mo, cloth, net 50c.
The fearlessly-expressed views of a popular pastor and
preacher on the all-important question of Money. Dr.
Myers shows how a man r\iay make, save, spend, Ciud gi-ve
money without doing violence to his conscience, or his stand-
ing as a member of the Church of Christ.
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROJVN, D.D. Yale University
Five Young Men
Messages of Yesterday for the Young Men of To-
day. i2mo, cloth, 75c.
Dean Brown's literary output is always assured of wel-
come and a large reading. His new work is specially suitable
to students in college, or young men in business or in the
home. But the general reader of almost any type, will be
able to find something of value in this latest yolume from the
pen of a recognized writer of light and leading.
DEWITT McMURRAY of the Dallas Daily News
The Religion of a Newspaper Man
i2mo, cloth, net $1.50.
"Every one of the chapters sparkles with a thousand gems
that Mr. McMurray has dug out of obscure as well as better-
known hiding-places and sprinkled in among his own thoughts
His quotations — and there are literally thousands of themi —
are exquisitely timed and placed,"— \S':?n«g^e/(i Republican.
BURRIS A. JENKINS, D.D.
The Man in the Street and Religion
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
**In a convindng and inspiring way and in a graceful
style, the author presses home this truth, the result of years
of trained study of human nature. The book is the ki^vi
that 'the man in the street' well enjoy." — Boston Globe.
LIGHT ON THE GREAT WAR
JAMES A. MJCDONALD, LL.D. Editor Toronto Globs
The North American Idea
The Cole Lectures for 1917. i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
The famous Canadian editor enjoys an established and
justly-earned reputation. In trenchant and stirring phrase
Dr. McDonald discusses the growth and development of that
spirit of liberty, just government, and freedom of individual
action, in the light of its relation to the Great World War.
EDJVARD LEIGH PELL, P.P. Author of" Troublesome
' —————— Religious Questions''
What Did Jesus ReallyTeach About War?
i2rao, cloth, net $1.00.
Unquestionably war is a matter of conscience. JBut in Dr.
Pell's opinion what America is suffering from just now is not
a troubled conscience so much as an untroubled conscience.
That is why this book does not stop with clearing up trouble-
some questions.
ARTHUR!. BROWN, P.P. AuthororUnitv and Missions''
■ ^' The foreign Alissionary," etc.
Russia in Transformation
l2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
Years may pass before New Russia will settle down to
stability of life and administration. ^leanwhile we may be
helped to understand the situation and have a deeper sym-
pathy with Russian brethren, if we study the conditions lead-
ing up to the Revolution and mind ourselves of fundamental
characteristics which will undoubtedly affect New Russia re-
gardless of the immediate outcome. The book is most timely.
R. A. TORRET, P.P. Supt. Los Angeles Bible Institute
The Voice of God in the Present Hour
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
A new collection of sermons by the famous pastor-evan-
gelist. They contain stirring gospel appeals and also special
messages of enheartenment for those who find themselves
perplexed and bewildered by the war conditions existing in
this and other lands.
JAMES M. GRAY, P.P. Dean of the
" Moody Bible Institute, Chicago
Prophecy and the Lord's Return
l2mo, cloth, net 75c.
What is the purpose of God in connection with the present
International cataclysm. Does prophecy deal with the world
to-day. The author, Dean of the Moody Bible Institute, of
Chic?,go, is well-knoA\Ti as a Bible student and expositor,
whose writings find appreciation throughout the Christian
world. Dr. Grey's chapters have unusual interest at this time.
NEW EDITIONS
S. HALL YOUNG
Alaska Days with John Muir
Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.15
"Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John
Muir's famous dog story? Here is a book by the man who
owned Stickeen and who v/as Muir's companion on that ad-
venturous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only
a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Alas-
kan wilderness; it is also a living portrait of John Muir in
the great moments of his career." — New York Times,
S. R. CROCKETT Auth»r of " Silv» Sa»d," etc.
Hal 'o the Ironsides : ^ ^if^romweu ^^*
Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
"Crockett's last story. A rip-roaring tale of the days of the
great Oliver — <iays when the dogs of war were let loose in
English meadows, and "the gallants of England struck home
for the King." — Examiner.
FANNY CROSBY
Fanny Crosby^s Story ^i^rZl
By S. Trevena Jackson. Illustrated, cloth, net $1.15
"This is, in a way, an autobiography, for it is the story of
Fanny Crosby's life as she told it to her friend, who retells
it in this charming book. All lovers of the blind hymn
writer ought to read this volume. It tells a story of pathos
and of cheer. It will strengthen the faith ana cheer the
heart of every reader." — Watchmcm-Examiner,
PROF. HUGH BLACK
The New World
i6mo, cloth, net $1.15.
"Dr. Black is a strong thinker and a clear, forcible writer.
Here he analyzes national tendencies toward unrest — social,
material, religious. This he does with moderation yet with
courage, and always with hopefulness." — The Outlook.
S. M. ZWEMER, P.P., F.R.G.S. Author »/ ^^ArabU" tU.
Childhood in the Moslem World
Illustrated, 8vo, cloth, net $2.00.
"The claims of millions of children living and dying under
the blighting influence of Islam are set forth with graphic
fidelity. Both in text and illustrations, Dr. Zwemer's new
book covers much ground hitherto lying untouched in Mo-
hammedan literature." — Christian Work.
INSPIRATION FOR MEN
ROBERT W. BOLWELL
After College— What ?
i2mo, cloth, net 75c.
A protest, in the form of autobiographical chapters, against
dawdling through college. The author is sprightly and read-
able,— anything but preachy — but does put some very whole-
some and helpful facts in such form as to grip the reade»,
HALFORD E. LUC COCK
Five-Minute Shop-Talks
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
One of the best things of its kind yet issued. In each
of these thirty or more brief addresses, Mr. Luccock em-
ploys terse, epigrammatic language and contrives to compress
into a five-minute talk the wisdom and counsel of a fifty-
minute sermon. Every word is made to tell — to tell some-
thing worth hearing and heeding.
CHARLES CARROLL ALBERTSON
Chapel Talks
A Collection of Sermons to College Students.
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
Practical discourses on essential subjects delivered in vari-
ous colleges and universities, including Columbia, Cornell,
Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and Virginia. No one of these
sermons required more than twenty-five minutes to deliver.
They are characterized by earnest argument, familiar illus-
trations and forceful appeal.
CORTLANDT MYERS, D. D. Author of " Real Prayer."
• ''The Real Holy Sfirit," etc.
The Man Inside
A Study of One's Self. By Minister at Tremont
Temple, Boston. i2mo, cloth, net soc.
A four-fold study of the inner life of a man, in which the
popular pastor of Tremont Temple, discusses the forces that
make hirn, lift him, save him, and move him. The book is
prepared in bright, interesting fashion, and abundantly fur-
nished with suitable and forceful illustration.
JOHN T. PARIS Popular-Price Editions
The "Success Books**
Three Vols, each, formerly $1.25 net. Now each
60c net (postage extra).
Seeking Success
Men Who Made Good
Making Good
Dr. J. R. Miller says: "Bright and short and full of illus-
trations from actual life, they are just the sort that will help
young men in the home in school among associates and in
busineas."
BIOGRAPHY
BOOKER T. tVASHINGTON
The Life and Times of Booker T.
Washington
By B. F. Riley, D.D., Author of "The White Man's
Burden," etc. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.50.
This authentic I<ife of the negro slave who rose, against
overwhelming odds, to the conspicuous position he occupied,
t's unique amon§ biographies in American history. The author
has succeeded m portraying this wonderful life with frank-
ness and fairness and with fidelity to the times to which the
history takes him.
THOMAS J. ARNOLD
The Early Life and Letters of General
Thomas J. Jackson (stonewau jackson)
A Biography by His Nephew. Illustrated, i2mo,
cloth, net $2.00.
Many biographies of Stonewall Jackson have appeared, but
none has devoted itself to the part in his life covered by the
present volume. The object of the new work is to reveal
something of his earlv life and to preserve in a permanent
foim such facts as will be of interest to his admirers.
JOHN OTIS BARROWS
In the Land of Ararat
A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Freeman
Barrows Ussher. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
A tender little biography. A record of a life of great use-
fulness, splendidly crowned by its being freely laid down in
the spirit of Him who "came not to be ministered unto but to
minister."
BASIL MATHEWS a popular Lift of the Atostlt Paul
Paul the Dauntless
The Course of a Great Adventure. Illustrated,
8vo, cloth, net $2.00.
A life-story of St. Paul which strikes a new note and is
told in a new vein. It paraphrases the life of the great
Apostle, as it depicts a man of gallant spirit, faring forth on
a great adventure. Without distorting the historic narrative
the author fills in the blanks wifc brightly written incidents.
It is a book of real and sustained pleasure.
MRS. PERCY V, PENNYBACKER
Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker
An Appreciation, by Helen Knox. Illustrated,
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"Ability counts for much in an administration but
tact counts for even more, and both of these qualities are
possessed to an unusual degree by this sweet-natured woman
from Texas." — Ladies' Home Journal.
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
FREDERICK IF. PEABODT
The ReligiO'Medical Masquerade
New Edition. i2mo, cloth, net $i.oo.
Ten years of critical investigation of Christian Science, re-
peatedly with the aid of legal process in important litigations
in which Mrs. Eddy was a party and he examined under oath
many of her closest adherents, have qualified Mr. Peabody,
above all others, to give a truthful representation of the char-
acter of the movement and its leaders. He was the Massa-
chusetts lawyer for Mrs. Eddy's sons in their protracted liti-
gation.
I, M. HALDEMAN, P.P.
Christian Science in the Light of Holy
Scripture
New Revised Bdition. i2mo, cloth, net $1.25
"Dr. Plaldeman brings every question he considers to the
bar of that highest tribunal, and tests it in the full light of
the divine revelation. All the resources of his intimate knowl-
edge of the Bible and of his powers of keen insight and ef-
fective presentation are drawn upon. He has so well suc-
ceeded that we do not see what more can be said. The proof
is absolute; it is clearly stated; it is exhaustive." — Examiner.
J. A. PHILLIPS Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal
" ~ ' Church South i?i Mexico
Roman Catholicism Analyzed
A Dispassionate Examination of Romish Claims.
With Foreword by Bishop Burt. 8vo, net $1.50.
"A dispassionate examination to the claims and doctrines
of the Roman Catholic Church. The arguments are clear
and conclusive. The logic is masterful, incisive, merciless
and based upon undisputed facts- The style is clear, lucid
and fascinating. It is an arsenal of anti-Catholic facts."—
Lookout.
WILLIAM PARKER
The Fundamental Error of Woman
Suffrage
i2mo, cloth, net 50c.
Most of the arguments advanced against Woman Suffrage
are purely economic. The author of this volume adopts an-
jother course, declaring the fundamental error to lie in the
realm of morals. From this viewpoint he discusses his subject
in its moral relation to the chief phases of modern life — mar-
r'age, home, religion, social intercourse, civic and political
activities, and so forth.
W. HALL CALVERT, M.P.
The Further Evolution of Man
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
A vigorous counterblast to the Darwinian theories of Nat-
ural Selection and the Survivial of the Fittest. The construc-
tive aim of the volume is to prove that social amelioration i«
a necessity r.f the spiritual evolution now in process in our
Western civilization.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the
expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, as
provided by the library rules or by special arrangement with
the Librarian in charge.
DATE BORROWED
DATE DUE
DATE BORROWED
DATE DUE
C28(747) MiOO
0035520116
J1565
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